Toni Morrison on Writing During the Crisis but Beyond the White Gaze

Toni Morrison believed that artists have a responsibility in times of crisis—not to offer escape, but to confront injustice and illuminate truth.

She rejected the expectation that Black writers must explain themselves to White audiences, insisting instead on the richness…

There are writers, and then there is Toni Morrison—a woman who did not just write, but conjured. Who did not just tell stories, but unmade and remade the world with sentences so rich they dripped, so sharp they cut, so soft they held you even as they undid you.

She taught me that language is more than communication. It is alchemy. A spell…