What Toni Morrison Said About Writing Matters More Than Ever

"You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down" ―Toni Morrison

First time I read a Toni Morrison novel, she gutted me. Next one I read gutted me, too. I don’t think that woman knew how to write any other way except to rip your heart out with words. Which is why she won over 30 literary awards, including both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature, both for Beloved.

Which, incidentally, is maybe the book that gutted me most.

I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately in the context of writing.

When she enrolled in Howard College in 1949 Washington, D.C. that was the first time she ran face-first into racial segregation. Back of the bus, blacks don’t sit with whites. Racially segregated restaurants. You don’t get to eat where white people eat.

Which is to say I imagine she knew what it’s like to feel the weight of oppression.

After she finished college, she was a teacher in Houston for a few years and then became a senior editor at Random House. Once the awards started rolling in, she went back to teaching. Taught creative writing at Princeton for seventeen years.

She taught her students that the way we absorb information is by narrative so it’s essential that writers take care how they use words.

Her biggest issue was what she called oppressive language.

The way we absorb information is by narrative so it’s essential that writers take care how they use words.

Oppressive language does more than represent violence. It IS violence. It does more than represent the limit of knowledge, it limits knowledge.

It must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind.

Sexist language, racist language, theistic language – all typical of policing languages

When she was teaching that to students, there was no internet.

No Substack, no Notes, no LinkedIn or Twitter. The only people putting opinions into the world were paid writers whose work was vetted by an editor with an eye to accountability, and libel charges.

And still, she was teaching them to take care how they use words. Not to use oppressive language. Be mindful of the words they use. Telling people not to use sexist language, or any “policing” language.

Now? No one is vetting us. People can say anything they want. And they do.

Rage bait. Outrage. Hate. Anger.

It’s everywhere you look. Hard to avoid it.

Men bashing women, women bashing men, political posturing and lecturing and finger wagging. I’ve even seen people arguing and flinging insults about a stupid television show for god’s sakes. Dozens of comments that devolved into insults.

What the hell is wrong with us? As if we need to be more divisive.

Sometimes, we get stuck in our ego, our anger. But also? Did you know inciting rage is the number one way to get engagement? People figure that out pretty fast.

Last year, Winta Zesu made $150,000 from rage bait videos on social media. According to a BBC story, she’s part of a growing group of online creators making ‘rage bait’ content, where the goal is simple: make people angry and bask in the thousands, or even millions, of shares and likes.

I read that, and I hear Morrison reminding us — oppressive language does more than represent violence. It IS violence.

I watched her Nobel Prize lecture.

It was everything she taught about writing, wrapped in a story. In it, she talks about the power of storytelling over lecturing and fearmongering.

“Make up a story... For our sake and yours forget your name in the street; tell us what the world has been to you in the dark places and in the light. Don't tell us what to believe, what to fear. Show us belief's wide skirt and the stitch that unravels fear's caul.” ― Toni Morrison, The Nobel Lecture, 1993

A simpler way to put that might be to take your pain and make art with it.

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The Bluest Eye broke me open. I couldn’t start another book for a while. My head was still stuck in that one. Couldn’t shake it.

It’s the story of a little girl who wishes she had blue eyes.

Because she looks around her and sees how the worlds treats little girls that look like her. And how the world treats little girls with blue eyes. Morrison just told the story, without preaching or finger wagging.

She’d certainly earned the right. But she chose storytelling over oppressive language.

She took care of her words.

And her words took care of her.

In a world filled with outrage, I think about that a lot.

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
― Toni Morrison