It was during my senior year of high school that the power of literature was solidified in my mind. It was during my senior year of high school when I realized literature’s power to decenter people from their lives and expose them to realities that need to be noticed and felt. It was during my senior year of high school when literature taught me about the power of words to create and inspire change. It was during my senior year of high school when I read Beloved by Toni Morrison and was introduced to her powerful literary legacy.
Toni Morrison focused her literary works on issues about race, Black identity, and on exposing the often hidden realities of Black lives in the United States. In her lifetime, she wrote 11 novels, children’s books, and multiple essays. In 1993, she was the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Some of her most known and critically acclaimed novels are Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, and Beloved.
As a writer, Toni Morrison unapologetically wrote, without fear, about the Black experience in the United States, a nation with a deep and disturbing history of racism that continues to manifest in different forms today. The content of her literary works has caused controversy throughout the years because it contains sexually explicit material, graphic descriptions of violence, and strong and disturbing language.
While some individuals find Toni Morrison’s literary works as overtly strong and disturbing, one should consider the origins of the unnerving content. Toni Morrison wrote from a desire to read authentic and impactful stories about the experiences of Black people. Unable to find literary works where matters and people she cared about were represented, she sought to change representation in the literary world and succeeded.
Morrison wrote about a side of the Black experience and narrative that is often overshadowed in history books. She wrote about trauma, pain, and inhumanity Black people faced at the hands of an oppressive country and its predominant white population. Her writing stems from hidden history and truth and forgotten victims. Morrison succeeds in making readers feel and understand the magnitude of the struggles Black people have encountered as a result of white supremacy.
To deny Toni Morrison’s work is to deny the horrifying history of the United States’ mistreatment of Black people and their experiences.
If Toni Morrison’s work makes us close the book and ponder the written words and take time to collect ourselves, then we understand her message. If her work decenters us from our own reality, we understand that it is everyone’s job to ensure the type of atrocities portrayed in the pages of Toni Morrison’s novels are never again experienced by Black people, or anyone else. The disturbing content in Toni Morrison’s literary work should shake and disturb us. Toni Morrison exemplifies the powerful force of the written word through her literary work. Novels are more than words artistically intertwined to create narratives. Novels reveal truths and calls to action to create one’s own legacy of change.