toni morrison

chloe  ardelia  anthony  wofford 

 

pagina   1   -   2   -   3

 

As she gets older -  Morrison says - the world becomes more interesting and more distressing

washingtonpost.com - 2012 - photo alfred a. knopf

 

Writing tips from Toni Morrison via The Paris Review 2012
1.        Write when you know you’re at your best
2.        There’s a line between revising and fretting
3.        good editor is 'like a priest or a psychiatrist'
4.        Don’t write with an audience in mind, write for the characters
5.        Control your characters
6.        Plot is like melody -  it doesn’t need to be complicated
7.        Style, like jazz, involves endless practice and restraint
8.        Be yourself but be aware of tradition

facebook/morrison - 2013
I am a storyteller and therefore an optimist, a firm believer in the ethical bend of the human heart, a believer in the mind's appetite for truth and its disgust with fraud .    I'm a believer in the power of knowledge and the ferocity of beauty, so from my point of view, your life is already artful  -  waiting,  just waiting,  for you to make it art  .
fb/thetonimorrisonsociety - 2019
The thought that leads me to contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people, outlawed languages flourishing underground, essayists' questions challenging authority never being posed, unstaged plays, canceled films - that thought is a nightmare  . As though a whole universe is being described in invisible ink  .
fb/tm - 23.9.2022

 

 

 

chloe ardelia_anthony wofford  

In her works Toni Morrison has explored the experience of Black women in a racist culture ... she changed her name from "Chloe" to "Toni", explaining once that people found "Chloe" too difficult to pronounce ...  she edited books by such Black authors as Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones.
1970 ... Morrison also established her new identity, which she later in 1992 rejected:
"I am really Chloe Anthony Wofford. That's who I am. I have been writing under this other person's name. I write some things now as Chloe Wofford, private things.   I regret having called myself Toni Morrison when I published my first novel ...

blackmag.org      -    zam.it 

www.pangea.news/toni-morrison-ecco-chi-era

https://diverseeducation.com - academics laud morrison’s literary legacy

https://sites.google.com/poetry/the-dead-of-september-11  - 11 settembre

audubon.org/news/remembering-toni-morrison-bird-whisperer

 

https://youtu.be/F4vIGvKpT1c  -  2012 - TM refuses to privilege white people in her novels

https://youtu.be/FAs3E1AgNeM - on language - evil and 'the white gaze' - fb/tmsoc  2013

www.facebook.com/OfficialToniMorrisonAuthor/videos - fb/m 2019

www.facebook.com/nobelprize  -  fb/nobelprize  2017

www.lindiceonline.com/osservatorio/intervista-toni-morrison  -  intervista 1995

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What I’m interested in is writing without the gaze  - without the white gaze

*

I always get and make a cup of coffee while it is still dark

it must be dark

and then I drink the coffee and watch the light come

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Kara Walker honors Toni Morrison’s life and legacy with a stunning tribute

for next week’s issue of the new yorker ❤
fb/thetonimorrisonsociety - 9.8.2019

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bio
Toni Morrison       18.02.1931 - 05.08.2019

The renowned novelist's publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, shared the news of her death the following morning .    A spokesperson later told the The New York Times the cause was complications of pneumonia .
yahoo.com  jns.org

Toni Morrison ... died Monday night - August 5 -  at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, a source at her publisher, Knopf, confirms to Pitchfork .
pitchfork.com     miamiherald.com      AP-new york    thejasminebrand.comv    nytimes    en.wikipedia.org

Si spegne a New York - per complicazioni polmonari -  il 5 agosto 2019 .
it.wikipedia.org    ansa - 6.8.2019

La famiglia Morrison ha confermato "con profonda tristezza" che la scrittrice è scomparsa "a seguito di una breve malattia" .   "È morta in pace la notte scorsa, circondata dalla sua famiglia e dai suoi amici",   hanno scritto in un comunicato i suoi familiari .   La famiglia ha voluto far sapere che "sebbene la sua scomparsa sia tremenda, siamo grati che lei abbia avuto una vita ben vissuta" .
susanna picone - fanpage.it

www.rainews.it/voce-contro-il-razzismo  -   www.facebook.com/NPR/videos   -   www.doppiozero.com/regina-damerica

STREET ARt   -   baltimoremagazine.com/section/toni-morrison-graffiti-alley-station-north
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Oh no, no, no.
My favourite writer .  So dearly beloved .  The only person I wanted to meet in this world to fall at her feet and say : thank you, thank you, thank you .  I hope you hear it, I hope you know it,  as so many millions do,  that you were,  and remain, a hero of countless hearts .

siddharth dhanvant shanghvi    <

.
A physical world without Toni Morrison !  Here goes ...

And we are so blessed.  So lucky! Toni Morrison left us so many many gifts.  Through her literature, she gave us an entire language to use in the journey of our dreams and wishes.  Thank you Mama Toni Morrison for the gifts of words !   The gifts of thought !    The power of language in the fight against the white gaze and the male gaze !
natalia molebatsi    <

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Grande Toni Morrison  .

marcia theophilo   <

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Beloved .   #tonymorrison

francesca matteoni   <

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... scopro con grande dispiacere che qualche giorno fa è mancata Toni Morrison .    Ho di lei un ricordo personale che mi piace condividere, con un prezioso filmato delle Teche rai, dal Festival di Mantova 2004  .
luciano minerva

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Toni Morrison was a national treasure, as good a storyteller, as captivating, in person as she was on the page .   Her writing was a beautiful, meaningful challenge to our conscience and our moral imagination .   What a gift to breathe the same air as her, if only for a while .
barack obama   <

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My deepest condolences to Toni Morrison's family and her millions of readers .   She was a beloved literary giant .   Her work will live forever inspiring new generations of artists .
isabel allende

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...

originally Chloe ardelia Wofford American author, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. In her works Toni Morrison has explored the black experience in a racist culture. She has been a member of both the National Council on the Arts and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Morrison has actively used her influence to defend the role of the artist and encouraged the publication of other black writers  ... Toni Morrison was born Chloe ardelia Wofford in Lorain, Ohio. Her parents had moved to the North to escape the problems of southern racism and she grew up relatively unscarred by racial prejudices. Her family were migrants, sharecroppers on both sides. She spent her childhood in the Midwest and read voraciously, from Jane Austen to Tolstoy. Morrison's father, George, was a welder, and told her folktales of the black community, transferring his African-American heritage to another generation ...
exampleessays.com

The Nobel Prize-winning author of Beloved and Sula began her literary career as an academic, and most of her twenties were spent studying or teaching at universities. After graduating from Howard in 1953 she went on to get her Master’s at Cornell, where she wrote a thesis on the theme of suicide in the work of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. She returned to Howard at the age of 26 to teach English, and it was during this time that she began developing the idea for her first novel, The Bluest Eye. The novel wouldn’t be published until 1970, though, when Morrison was 39.
policymic.com - fb/tm - 2013

quando era una mamma single abitava a Midtown Manhattan e il Nobel era di là da venire lavorava in una casa editrice. Si alzava tutti i giorni alle 5 e scriveva prima di svegliare i bimbi e prepararli per la scuola. Ancora oggi, che probabilmente è la scrittrice più pagata d'America, quando lavora a un romanzo si sveglia all'alba, prende matita e bloc-notes, e comincia a scrivere. Finché non le fa male la mano.
luigi mascheroni - ilgiornale.it - 2013

I get up before the light. I’m really smart in the morning.
I wanted to read a book about the most vulnerable person in society — female, child, black — and it wasn’t around, so I started writing it.
studio360.org - 2014

Tony Morrison si è trovata a utilizzare uno pseudonimo suo malgrado. Non tutti, peraltro, sanno che si tratta di un nom de plume e che il suo vero nome è Chloe Ardelia Wofford. Tony è un riferimento a sant’Antonio, cui la scrittrice si era affidata quando si convertì al cattolicesimo, mentre Morrison era il cognome del suo primo marito, da cui divorziò alla fine degli anni Sessanta. Il nome fu utilizzato per pubblicare il suo primo romanzo, L’occhio più azzurro 1970 e da allora la scrittrice semplicemente non poté più tornare indietro. Parlando col New York qualche anno fa, non raccontò perché scelse di utilizzare uno pseudonimo nel 1970, ma confessò di essersi pentita della scelta quasi subito: «Non sono stata stupida? Mi sentii rovinata». Nella stessa intervista/ritratto, la scrittrice premio Nobel rivela anche di non amare molto il nome Tony Morrison che, sostiene, non le appartiene.
rivistastudio.com  - 2018

 

 

Morrison Toni  -  Nombre literario de Chloe ardelia Morrison Wafford

novelista norteamericana, n. en Lorain Ohio. De raza negra y origen modesto, estudió en la Universidad Howard de Washington, de mayoría negra, y en la Universidad Cornell de Ithaca N.Y. Graduada en filología inglesa, en Howard profesó inglés y humanidades 1957-64, tras haberlo hecho en la Universidad Southern de Texas. En 1964, tras una ruptura matrimonial, comenzó a trabajar como editora literaria y escritora ella misma. En su primera obra, The Bluest Eyes 1970 marcó clara preferencia por los personajes de color tratados con compromiso político y social, prefiriendo a personajes femeninos como protagonistas para sus tramas. Tras sus novelas Sula (1973), La canción de Salomón (1977) y La isla de los caballeros (1981), con Beloved 1986 ganó el premio Pulitzer. Admiradora y gran conocedora de W. Faulkner,en 1991 se reincorporó a la docencia como profesora de literatura en la Universidad de Princeton, y en 1993, al año de aparecer su sexta novela, Jazz, fue galardonada con el premio Nobel de Literatura.
www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/m/morrison.htm

Vive tra Rockland County nello stato di New York e Princeton nel New Jersey dove insegna all'Università "scrittura creativa".

divorziata da harold morrison - 1958-1964  --- numerosi ed importanti i riconoscimenti che ha ricevuto e continua a meritare .

wuz.it

In 1993 Morrison became the first African American woman to wing the Nobel Prize in literature.
-- I tell my students  'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else.     If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.    This is not just a grab-bag candy game'.
fb/tm

 

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The purpose of freedom is to free someone else

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Da ragazza ero convinta che sarei diventata ballerina .

mi laureai e decisi di lavorare all'Università .  senz'altro una scelta migliore !

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i will call them

my people
which were not

my people
and her beloved
which was

not beloved

2012

www.tonimorrisonsociety.org

 

 

The language must be careful and
appear effortless .

It must not sweat .

It must suggest and be
provocative at the same time ...
It is the thing that black people
love so much - the saying of words
holding them on the tongue .

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nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture

guardian.co.uk/tonimorrison/voices.cla.umn.edu



the papers
OF NOBEL LAUREATE TONI MORRISON ARE NOW PART OF THE PERMANENT LIBRARY COLLECTIONS OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, WHERE THE RENOWNED AUTHOR SERVED ON THE FACULTY FOR 17 YEARS.
INCLUDED DRAFTS OF THE BLUEST EYE.
ALSO INCLUDED ARE MATERIALS FOR MORRISON'S CHILDREN'S LITERATURE, LYRICS, LECTURES, NONFICTION WRITING, A PLAY, CORRESPONDENCE, DIARIES, PHOTOGRAPHS, COURSE MATERIALS, VIDEOTAPES AND MORE.

fb/tm - 2014  -  alumni.princeton.edu

Toni Morrison’s papers have never been available for research, so I am confident that they will be an invaluable resource for literary researchers, including faculty and students from Princeton, as well as visitors from other universities and colleges internationally.

curator of manuscripts in the department of rare books and special collections Don Skemer
fb/tm - 2014


Toni Morrison è stata insignita del Premio Nobel

per LA LETTERATURA NEL 1993. IL SUO PRIMO LIBRO, DEL 1970, L’OCCHIO PIÙ AZZURRO, RIMANE UN CLASSICO. UNA PICCOLA NERA SOFFRE DI UNA SINGOLARE FORMA DI DISAGIO E DI CADUTA DELLE ILLUSIONI QUANTO PIÙ LE APPARE IMPOSSIBILE ASSOMIGLIARE AL MODELLO ESTETICO DI SHIRLEY TEMPLE. ALLA COMUNITÀ NERA, CUI APPARTIENE, TONI MORRISON HA DEDICATO LA SUA PRODUZIONE LETTERARIA. COSÌ, LA STORIA DI PARADISO, AMBIENTATA NELLA CITTADINA DI RUBY IN OKLAHOMA, TRATTA DI UN CONFLITTO GENERAZIONALE E DELL’ARRIVO “DESTABILIZZANTE” DI CINQUE DONNE, CHE SI RIFUGIANO NELL’EX-CONVENTO DELLA CITTADINA. COSÌ, ANCHE, LA STORIA D’AMORE E DI FASCINAZIONE NARRATA NEL SUO RECENTISSIMO LIBRO, AMORE, HA PER SFONDO LA VICENDA DEI NERI AMERICANI E IL LORO TORMENTATO PERCORSO DALLA SCHIAVITÙ ALLA CONSAPEVOLEZZA - DALL’ESSERE FACILI BERSAGLI, SGUARNITI, DI UNA CULTURA DI MASSA TRAVOLGENTE, ALL’ACQUISIZIONE DI UNA INDIVIDUALITÀ CULTURALE AUTONOMA.

eeditrice.com

 

TONI MORRISON  1993 Nobel Laureate in Literature
who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import

gives life to an essential aspect of american reality
http://nobelprizes.com/nobel/literature/1993a.html

www.nobelprize.org/lecture

 

I stood at the border, stood at the edge and claimed it as central

Claimed it as central, and let the rest of the world move over to where I was

mi sono messa al confine, al margine, e ne ho rivendicata la centralità

ne ho rivendicata la centralità e ho lasciato che il resto del mondo si spostasse dov'ero io

1998 - intervista di jana wendt  sull'intenzione  di tm di scrivere futuri romanzi

ilbolive.unipd.it

 

from toni morrison’s nobel acceptance speech

she discusses language and the contemporary challenges it faces: “the systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek - 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 are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.

legacy-project.org     

literature-awards.com 

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Once upon a time there was an old woman .   Blind but wise .

Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps .  Or a griot soothing restless children.   I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures .
Once upon a time there was an old woman .  Blind .  Wise .

C’era una volta una vecchia. Cieca, ma saggia. O era un vecchio? Forse un guru. O un griot che ha il compito di calmare i bambini irrequieti. Ho sentito questa storia, o proprio una come questa, nella tradizione di diverse culture.
C’era una volta una vecchia. Cieca. Saggia .

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Why didn't you reach out, touch us with your soft fingers, delay the sound bite, the lesson, until you knew who we were? Did you so despise our trick, our modus operandi you could not see that we were baffled about how to get your attention ?   We are young . Unripe .   We have heard all our short lives that we have to be responsible .   What could that possibly mean in the catastrophe this world has become; where, as a poet said, "nothing needs to be exposed since it is already barefaced.

Our inheritance is an affront . You want us to have your old, blank eyes and see only cruelty and mediocrity.    Do you think we are stupid enough to perjure ourselves again and again with the fiction of nationhood ? How dare you talk to us of duty when we stand waist deep in the toxin of your past ?        

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Il sistematico saccheggio del linguaggio può essere riconosciuto nella tendenza di coloro che lo usano facendo a meno delle sue proprietà maieutiche come le sfumature, la complessità, per minaccia e assoggettamento. Il linguaggio oppressivo fa qualcosa di più che rappresentare la violenza; è la violenza; fa qualcosa di più che rappresentare i limiti della conoscenza; limita la conoscenza. Se è il linguaggio che offusca lo stato o il falso linguaggio dei media stupidi; se è l’orgoglioso ma imbalsamato linguaggio dell’accademia o il comodo linguaggio della scienza; se è il linguaggio maligno della legge senza etica, o il linguaggio fatto apposta per discriminare le minoranze, nascondere il suo razzistico saccheggio nella sua sfrontatezza letteraria - esso deve essere rifiutato, modificato e palesato. È il linguaggio che beve sangue, che piega le vulnerabilità, che nasconde i suoi stivali fascisti sotto crinoline di rispettabilità e patriottismo e si muove in fretta e furia verso la linea inferiore e verso le menti inferiori. Linguaggio sessista, linguaggio razzista, linguaggio teistico - tutti sono linguaggi tipici della politica del dominio, e non possono, non permettono nuove conoscenze né incoraggiano il mutuo scambio di idee …
La vitalità della lingua sta nella sua capacità di descrivere le vite reali, immaginate e possibili di chi la parla, la legge e la scrive. Sebbene la sua padronanza possa qualche volta sostituire l’esperienza, essa non è un suo sostituto …
Il lavoro della parola è sublime; questo significa che assicura la nostra differenza, la nostra umana differenza - il modo nel quale noi siamo, diversi da altre persone viventi.
Noi moriamo. Questo può essere il significato della vita. Ma noi creiamo un linguaggio. Questo può essere la misura delle nostre vite.

nobelprize.org/lecture

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tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man.     what moves at the margin.     what it is to have no home in this place.    to be set adrift from the one you knew.      what it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.   

...

we die.    that may be the meaning of life.     but we do language.     that may be the measure of our lives.

from Nobel Lecture,  dec 7, 1993  

facebook.com/nobelprize/videos

 

 

 

L’Amérique est en voie d’autodestruction
Ce sont deux grands écrivains.

Deux amis aussi ... l’Américaine Toni Morrison, prix Nobel 1993, et le Nigérian Wole Soyinka, prix Nobel 1986
Vous êtes, tous les deux, de passage à Paris pour participer à un colloque de l’Académie universelle des Cultures, dont le thème était cette année la communauté. Ce thème a-t-il pour vous une importance particulière?
T. Morrison. – Sans doute. J’ai cherché à montrer que les arts peuvent vous faire prendre conscience de votre rapport au reste du monde, et vous rendre fier de votre appartenance ethnique ou nationale. On considère souvent l’art comme de l’aspirine: dans les situations tragiques, il procure un soula-gement. Mais en réalité il offre une véritable information, un authentique savoir, il soude la communauté et vous donne accès à d’autres sociétés que la vôtre, sans peur de l’inconnu. L’art permet de révérer sans risque la création d’autrui.

Quelle est, selon vous, la mission de l’écrivain?
T. Morrison. – La seule question que je me pose en écrivant, c’est celle de l’approbation des lecteurs. Il ne s’agit pas qu’ils aiment le livre, mais qu’ils m’accordent leur confiance. C’est une affaire d’authenticité. Je cherche, en fait, à transcrire des expériences dans un langage qui soit digne d’eux.

tempsreel.nouvelobs.com

 

La sua definizione di Bill Clinton come 'primo presidente nero d'America'

e' stata ripetuta all'ossessione durante battaglia per la Carolina del Sud, ma ora Toni Morrison ha deciso di puntare su Barack Obama per mandare il primo afroamericano alla Casa Bianca. La scrittrice afroamericana ha infatti scritto una lettera di endorsement al senatore dell'Illinois, che oggi la campagna di Obama ha reso pubblica

washington  adnkronos

non appoggio Obama perché è nero

ma perché è intelligente, integro di un’autenticità rara.la sua candidatura è come uno dei momenti singolari che le nazioni possono ignorare solo a loro rischio.
primapress.it

La visione di Obama chiama i nostri angeli migliori

la notte del voto davanti alla tv ci sarà da divertirsi un sacco . definì Bill Clinton “il primo presidente nero” per come fu disprezzato dall’establishement bianco .     un Obama presidente andrebbe bene e sarebbe interessante, avrebbe un certo impatto
alessio altichieri - chelseamia.corriere.it

la gente è diversa   il paese stesso è diverso
Con lui si torna all'antica idea del “bene comune, che ci è mancata da otto anni a questa parte. Uno dei motivi per cui ho profondo rispetto per lui è che egli si circonda di persone ‘veramente’ intelligenti, e non di persone intelligenti che dicono tutto ciò che vuole sentirsi dire. Ama il dialogo, la discussione, e quello che dice è tutto vero”.

cep - ilvelino.it

In America today, post-civil-rights legislation, white people’s conviction of their natural superiority is being lost. Rapidly lost. There are “people of color” everywhere, threatening to erase this long-understood definition of America. And what then? Another black President? A predominantly black Senate? Three black Supreme Court Justices? The threat is frightening.
fb/tm - 20.11.2016 - The New Yorker

 

 

le nuove generazioni vivono ascoltando musica nera
La cultura a cui sono esposti è nutrita di musica afro-americana   

canzoni e balli  -  ogni cosa  -

Quindi non si sentono a disagio  -  non hanno paura    

non pensano  piu  all'  'altro

 

 

 

Eravamo showman al soldo dei ricchi bianchi

Eravamo balie, cuochi, facchini, mezzadri. Chi l'avrebbe mai potuto immaginare. E' stata una strada lunga e tortuosa.
Corriere della Sera - adnkronos


Come avvenne?
«Tra schiavi neri e servi bianchi, di fatto servi della gleba, potevano crearsi alleanze di disgraziati, e da lì sollevazioni, rivolte. L’istituzionalizzazione della schiavitù dei neri ha scongiurato il pericolo: formalmente il servo bianco era libero e il servo nero in catene. Il bianco povero non aveva altro che la sua supposta libertà, e questa supposta libertà poteva esprimersi solo nel disprezzo per i neri. Ecco costruito il palcoscenico per la tragedia del razzismo, che sarebbe andata in scena durante tutti i tre secoli successivi».
maria grazia minetti - lastampa

LA LETTERATURA
crede che la letteratura possa dare un contributo salvifico agli orrori che la cronaca ci sta proponendo in questi ultimi tempi?
Ho una grande fede nel fatto che gli intellettuali abbiano in qualche modo un ruolo da svolgere e una forte responsabilità. Sono anche consapevole che le peggiori persone al mondo ascoltano o leggono le migliori opere, dunque c'é un confine molto sottile tra la disperazione e la speranza: cercare un equilibrio é il significato di essere oggi al mondo.

wuz.it

la letteratura può cambiare il mondo?

Lo può cambiare, ma lentamente. Molto di più può fare la cultura popolare. E' un toccasana contro il razzismo. Dal rap, al jazz alla moda "afro" grazie al cielo la nostra cultura è ormai un misto di cose diverse. E' la strada da seguire in futuro.

emilia ippolito - espresso.repubblica.it - festival  mantova 2012

 

 

PLAYING IN THE DARK

It is true that I do not want to encourage those totalizing approaches to African-American scholarship which have no drive other than the exchange of dominations - dominant Eurocentric scholarship replaced by dominant Afrocentric scholarship .    More interesting is what makes intellectual domination possible; how knowledge is transformed from invasion and conquest to revelation and choice; what ignites and informs the literary imagination, and what forces help establish the parameters of criticism .

1992

 

 

 

 

PARADISE
A voluntary act to fill empty hours had become intensive labor streaked with the bad feelings that ride the skin like pollen when too much about one's neighbors is known
.

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can we find paradise on Earth?
-- Any white person assembling to instruct free Negroes to read or write shall be fined not over $50 also be imprisoned not exceeding two months. It is further enacted that if any white person for pay shall assemble with slaves for the purpose of teaching them to read or write he shall for each offence be fined at the discretion of the justice ten to one hundred dollars  --
Toni Morrison speaks to the Telegraph about love, loss and modernity
It was inevitable, therefore, that when I edited The Black Book, a complex record of African-American life that I solicited from collectors, the earliest newspapers would fascinate me, especially the “coloured” ones. There, in photographs and print so much African-American history – sad, ironic, resistant, tragic, proud, and triumphant — was on display. Of particular interest were those printed in the 19th century when my grandfather spent his few minutes at school. I learnt there were about 50 black newspapers produced in the southwest following emancipation and the violent displacement of Native Americans from Oklahoma. The opportunity to establish black towns was as feverish as the rush for whites to occupy the land. The “coloured” newspapers encouraged the rush and promised a kind of paradise to the newcomers: land, their own government, safety; there were even movements to establish their own state.
tm - telegraph.co.uk - 2014

 

 

 

how much effort do you put into revising your work?
I love that part

that's the best part, revision. I do it even after the books are bound! Thinking about it before you write it is delicious. Writing it all out for the first time is painful because so much of the writing isn't very good. I didn't know in the beginning that I could go back and make it better; so I minded very much writing badly. But now I don't mind at all because there's that wonderful time in the future when I will make it better, when I can see better what I should have said and how to change it. I love that part!
jane bakerman - interview - black american literature forum - summer 1978
fb/tm - 2014

 

 

Toni Morrison gives fresh look at the Louvre
PARIS: The Louvre is inviting slam poets into its gilded galleries to rap about paintings. If that seems unusual, it is. With Toni Morrison as guest curator this month, the museum is dreaming up new ways to look at art.
The American Nobel laureate has helped the Louvre conceive a series of lectures, readings, films, concerts, debates and slam poetry that will continue through Nov. 29. All center around her theme "The Foreigner's Home touching on national identity, exile and the idea of belonging ...
"What you think you know about U.S. culture ... much of it, its roots are from African-Americans. We made modernity in that country."
"The point is that you can use your disadvantages Morrison said. "Out of disadvantages and energy comes a new thing that has never been seen before."

ass press - nov 2006

Toni Morrison est l'invitée du Musée du Louvre pour une série de rencontres sur le thème de L'étranger chez soi.  

republique-des-lettres.fr

TONI MORRISON 'SLAMS' THE LOUVRE
Toni Morrison's curatorial stint this month at Paris' Louvre is proving to be extremely popular, drawing crowds from far beyond the city of lights and its troubled suburbs. As Il Manifesto's Maria Teresa Carbone reports, the Nobel laureate has created a program of events that have succeeded in bringing the "post-black" movement to the venerable museum. "It could be interesting writes Carbone, "to copy the Louvre's initiative in Italy."
artforum.com

dinamica delle sensazioni      

Corps étrangers: danse, dessin, film. Questa sezione è parte di un progetto più ampio dal titolo Etranger chez soi, voluto dalla scrittrice americana Toni Morrison con la complicità del Louvre, in cui si esplorano le relazioni tra la performance e i linguaggi grafici
Enrico Pitozzi - art-o.net 

https://youtu.be/kRLM6C-ZQm8  -  tm at louvre  2006

 

 

 

The '50s were my time

It was when I was smart young — I thought I knew everything. I wanted to have a character live at that time and pass through the U.S. as though it were a battlefield which it was in a way.
collegiatetimes.com - 2012

 

 

 

 

 

some have god’s words others have songs of comfort
for the bereaved. if i can pluck courage here i would
like to speak directly to the dead - the september dead.
those children of ancestors born in every continent
on the planet asia europe africa the americas…
born of ancestors who wore kilts obis saris geles
wide straw hats yarmulkes goatski wooden shoes
feathers and cloths to cover their hair. but i would not say
a word until i could set aside all i know or believe about
nations wars leaders the governed and ungovernable
all i suspect about armor and entrails. first i would freshen
my tongue abandon sentences crafted to know evil - wanton
or studied explosive or quietly sinister whether born of
a sated appetite or hunger of vengeance or the simple
compulsion to stand up before falling down. i would purge
my language of hypberbole of its eagerness to analyze
the levels of wickedness ranking them calculating their
higher or lower status among others of its kind.
speaking to the broken and the dead is too difficult for
a mouth full of blood. too holy an act for impure thoughts.
because the dead are free, absolute they cannot be seduced by blitz.
to speak to you the dead of september 11 i must not claim
false intimacy or summon an overheated heart glazed
just in time for a camera. i must be steady and i must be clear
knowing all the time that i have nothing to say - no words
stronger than the steel that pressed you into itself no scripture
older or more elegant than the ancient atoms you have become.
and i have nothing to give either - except this gesture
this thread thrown between your humanity and mine
i want to hold you in my arms
and as your soul got shot of its box of flesh to understand
AS YOU HAVE DONE THE WIT OF ETERNITY
 ITS GIFT OF UNHINGED RELEASE TEARING THROUGH
the darkness of its knell.

 lettura di toni morrison - festivaletteratura  mantova  -  rainews24 - 2004

 

 

the dead  of

september 11 2001

 

 

 

 

the white critical gaze distorts your being

but if you write away from it or regardless of it

the world is yours

toni morrison at the new press social justice awards - 10 dicembre 2014 - fb/tm

 

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nella polarità creata dal colore della pelle

si trova non solo il non libero ma anche il non-io  

Questo è un vero e proprio terreno di gioco per l’immaginazione

 


fb/tm
toni  18enne
.
There is nothing
of any consequence
in education
in the economy
in city planning
in social policy
that does not concern
black people

...
Make a difference about
something other than yourselves

...
I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, from the other person.
I never absorbed that.
I always thought that there was something deficient
about such people.

conversations

 

i wrote my first novel because i wanted to read it

 

Too much tail

All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity

Can't nobody fly with all that shit

Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down

 

the ability of writers to imagine what is not the self

to familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar

is the test of their power

when there is pain there are no words.   all pain is the same

if there is a book you really want to read

but it hasn’t been written yet

then you must write it


what difference do it make if the thing you scared of

is real or not?

song of solomon

 

 


birth life and death

each took place on the hidden side of a leaf

 

...

 

Adoro l'Italia perché non è pretenziosa

come la Francia e ogni volta che ci vado
sono accolta da folle enormi e calorose

On writing
The writing is — I'm free from pain
It's the place where I live -  it's where I have control -  it's where nobody tells me what to do -  it's where my imagination is fecund and I am really at my best.
Nothing matters more in the world or in my body or anywhere when I'm writing.
It is dangerous because I'm thinking up dangerous, difficult things, but it is also extremely safe for me to be in that place.
npr.org - fb/tm - 2015
The practice of writing makes demands on me that nothing else really does .
tm on ideas - 2002  - cbc.ca/radio/reading-and-writing


How soon country people forget
When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever.   
As though there never was a time when they didn't love it.    The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it.     There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves.
...
What’s the world for you if you can’t make it up the way you want it ?
jazz
Very, very early in the morning
before they got up. I'm not very good at night. I don't generate much. But I'm a very early riser, so I did that, and I did it on weekends. In the summers, the kids would go to my parents in Ohio, where my sister lives - my whole family lives out there — so the whole summer was devoted to writing.
And that's how I got it done. It seems a little frenetic now, but when I think about the lives normal women live — of doing several things — it's the same. They do anything that they can. They organize it. And you learn how to use time. You don't have to learn how to wash the dishes every time you do that. You already know how to do that. So, while you're doing that, you're thinking. You know, it doesn't take up your whole mind. Or just on the subway. I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in that packed train, where you can't do anything anyway. Well, you can read the paper, but you're sort of in there.
And then I would think about, well, would she do this? And then sometimes I'd really get something good. By the time I'd arrived at work, I would jot it down so I wouldn't forget. It was a very strong interior life that I developed for the characters, and for myself, because something was always churning. There was no blank time. I don't have to do that anymore. But still, I'm involved in a lot of things, I mean, I don't go out very much.
2016 - fb/toni morrison - thisrecording.com


THE SOURCE OF SELF-REGARD
THE ORIGIN OF OTHERS
The Bluest Eye
Sula
Song of Solomon
Tar Baby
Beloved
Jazz
Paradise
Love
A Mercy
Home
God Help the Child
SWEETNESS
CONVERSATIONS





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison

1977        National Book Critics Circle Award
1977        American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award
1987–88  Robert F. Kennedy Book Award
1988        Helmerich Award
1988        American Book Award
1988        Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Race Relations
1988        Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
1988        Frederic G. Melcher Book Award
1989        MLA Commonwealth Award in Literature
1993        Nobel Prize for Literature
1993        Commander of the Arts and Letters Paris
1994        Condorcet Medal Paris
1994        Pearl Buck Award
1994        Rhegium Julii Prize for Literature
1996        Jefferson Lecture
1996        National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters
2000        National Humanities Medal
2002        100 Greatest African Americans
2005        Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Oxford University
2008        Grammy Awards Best Spoken-Word Album for Children
2009        Norman Mailer Prize, Lifetime Achievement
2010        Officier de la Légion d'Honneur
2011        Honorary Doctor of Letters at Rutgers University Graduation Commencement
2011        Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of Geneva
2012        Presidential Medal of Freedom
2013        The Nichols-Chancellor's Medal awarded by Vanderbilt University
2014        Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award

2015        UCLA MEDAL
2016        PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction
2016        mcdowell medal  lifetime achievement honor
2016        Emerson-Thoreau Medal - the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
2017        authors guild distinguished service  awards
2017        PRINCETON UNIVERSITY naming
2018        honor for a Lifetime of Excellence in Fiction - Center for Fiction - ny
2019        American Academy of Arts and Letters'  gold medal for fiction

PREMIO SPECIALE GRINZANE  CAVOUR    2006   

prima donna di colore a ricevere il Premio Nobel per la Letteratura.

Toni Morrison attualmente vive tra Rockland County, nello stato di New York, e Princeton, dove è docente di letteratura presso l'università.
Violenza, razzismo, schiavitù, discriminazione, rapporti tra generi, sono gli argomenti che ritornano in tutti i suoi ROMANZI , vicende sanguinarie, terrificanti, ma anche tenere, che vogliono ridare voce agli afro-americani, farli uscire dal silenzio e raccontare la loro storia.   non certo "leggeri", ma capaci di far discutere e di spaccare l'opinione pubblica.

grinzane.it


Princeton University 2017
Princeton University's trustees have approved recommendations to name West College, a prominent and central campus building, for the Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, an emeritus faculty member at Princeton .
princeton.edu - 2017
Effective Saturday, July 1, the West College building on the Princeton University campus will be named in honor of Nobel laureate and emeritus faculty member Toni Morrison.
fb/tm - 2017

Princeton University dedicated the naming of Morrison Hall  in honor of Toni Morrison, the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, and the recipient of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. Morrison was the first African American to be awarded the prize.
fb/tm - 22.11.2017
princeton.edu
IN VENDITA La sua collezione privata di libri - più di 1.200
it.finance.yahoo.com  -   novembre 2020

 

 

 

 

I am a black writer. No hiding. It’s different.
do you still write early in the morning?
No !   Now I can’t do it.   I wake up that same time, but the physical stuff is so different now.   I write in the evening, at 6 or 7pm.
do you write every day?
No.   I think every day. Sometimes I can do three pages, sometimes I do half of one. It’s not so much the amount as what’s clear in my mind, or what I want to develop.
is black literature still alive today?
It has moved.   The music of black people was the most important thing, and then finally it moved and the black writing and literature became important.    Now it’s nothing to single out.
have you had a good life?
I have lived a long life, and it’s good.
will you keep writing?
Oh yeah.
My best novel is Jazz, but nobody cares about it but me.
interview alain elkann - alainelkanninterviews.com - 2018

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ascolta : è la condizione in cui si trova la nostra condizione .    tutti vogliono la vita di un nero .    tutti.     i bianchi ci vogliono morti, zitti zitti, che poi è lo stesso che morti .     le donne bianche ?   lo stesso, sai.    ci vogliono universali, umani, senza coscienza di razza, addomesticati, tranne che a letto.     a letto un po' di movimento razziale gli fa benissimo .     ma fuori dal letto vogliono che siamo degli individui .     tu gli dici :  'ma hanno linciato mio padre ' .     e loro ti rispondono :   'si, ma tu sei meglio di chi ha linciato tuo padre, dunque dimentica ' .
amore - love -  2003

 

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Write what you want to read
I wrote the first book because I wanted to read it. I thought that kind of book, with that subject—those most vulnerable, most undescribed, not taken seriously little black girls—had never existed seriously in literature. No one had ever written about them except as props. Since I couldn’t find a book that did that, I thought, “Well, I’ll write it and then I’ll read it.” It was really the reading impulse that got me into the writing thing.
2014 - nea arts magazine - lithub.com

 

 

 

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'Chipotle Cups'  per le storie di  Jonathan Safran Foer - Toni Morrison -  ed altri autori

https://youtu.be/QVcoo6rxAXA  -  dal 2014 -  cultivating thought

 

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USPS Forever Stamp  7.3.2023
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