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The Brilliance of Toni Morrison


Let me just start this post by saying this: even though Song of Solomon is an extremely tough read, it captivates my interest with every page. While reading this, I became aware of the truly brilliant mind that Toni Morrison had. Lately I’ve been falling down rabbit holes on Youtube, and my most recent types of videos have been Toni Morrison interviews. One of which I found very interesting. All are short videos, around 6-7 minutes, but each hold insight into the novel that I would never know unless told so by the author herself. (A few videos will be linked at the bottom of this post (: ). 
In the video, Toni Morrison explained one of the reasons behind choosing the name of the book. A central theme and reason for writing this book was to show the true roots and different types of African American culture. Growing up, almost everyone in Morrison’s community included bible verses and phrases commonly within everyday speech and conversations. This sparked the idea to include many biblical names in the novel, as well as the idea to include some biblical aspect in the title of the book. In addition to the biblical phrases, an extremely large part of Toni Morrison’s black culture was music and more specifically singing. In the video, she went on to say how many people in her community spread and represented their history through songs and little tales they told (which often has biblical roots as well). Some of the tales Morrison was told as a kid inspired her to write this novel. Another aspect I found to be interesting was the time in which the book took place/ended in. Toni Morrison’s reason for ending the book in the early 60’s was to stop the novel before the civil rights movement became so large, so she could focus on the foundation of day to day segregation, and how it impacted different types of African Americans. 
My favorite quote from the video is Morrison saying, “the one thing you say about a myth is that there’s some truth in there, no matter how bizarre they may seem”. This statement holds true all throughout the “bizarre” occurrences in the novel. Toni Morrison shared that her favorite myth was about slaves that “under certain circumstances”could fly back to Africa. Upon hearing her say this, a light bulb moment occurred with me and I immediately connected that back to the story that we talked about before reading the book, as well as Mr. Smith’s “flight” at the beginning of the novel. Connecting back to the biblical aspect of the novel, Morrison also spoke about how often flight is mentioned in the bible, and how that inspired her even more. This all inspired Morrison to want to write a novel about not just a man’s “flight”, but his “escape from the cultural prison that he found himself in”. This genuinely intrigued me, and I can’t look at a single page of this book again without acknowledging how much intelligence Toni Morrison inscribed into every word. I loved how in the video she referred to Milkman’s journey as an “unlearning experience” because of how accurately it described the complex mental journey Milkman goes on throughout the entirety of the book. There are so many more things that I learned from just a 6 minute video, and there are so many more videos that intrigued me just as much.

Below are some of the Toni Morrison interview videos that I found most interesting!!

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