Toni Morrison (1931-2019): Reaching toward the Ineffable

Abstract

Be it grand or slender, burrowing, blasting, or refusing to sanctify; whether it laughs out loud or is a cry without an alphabet, the choice word, the chosen silence, unmolested language surges toward knowledge, not its destruction. But who does not know of literature banned because it is interrogative; discredited because it is critical; erased because alternate? And how many are outraged by the thought of a self-ravaged tongue? (Stockholm lecture, 1993, D 203, italics mine) Toni Morrison, c...