Nobel laureate Toni Morrison said literature has moved past the racial tensions present in society yesterday during a lecture at Harvard University’s Sanders Theatre.
“Writers have already said farewell to the old way of racial anchors — how nice it would be, in this case, if life imitated art,” Morrison said.
The renowned author, whose works include “Beloved,” “Sula” and “The Bluest Eye,” discussed the changes in race relations in literature and the current race conditions.
Morrison said she wished the main topic of the lecture didn’t have to be race, but as a black woman she knew the idea would always be present.
“It is keenly a concern of every immigrant writer in the United States,” she said. “The question, ‘Are you a black writer or are you an American writer?’ means the two things are clearly incompatible. It’s another way of asking, ‘Are you human?’”
Morrison spoke about both the changes in race relations throughout history and the changes in literature. She said “the expressive language of racial encounter has undergone a change,” and that language has been the force that has made literature undergo this change before society.
“I don’t want to be misunderstood to say that racial neutrality is the work of literature, its job,” she said. She also commented that she “did not want racial neutrality in this country — the 19th century was a time for that.”
She first commented on the problems in society today prevalent in Census figures, death penalty statistics and the record number of cases of racial discrimination and racial profiling, and said, “Not one of these factors would let you see that racial politics is not benign.”
Morrison also spoke about the history of racial politics in literature, which she said is complicated. She said in the beginning it was a “surrogate relationship.”
She gave examples from different novels, including “Out of Africa,” “Gone with the Wind,” “To Kill a Mockingbird,” “Jezebel” and “A Member of the Wedding,” saying “these early references to interracial relationships are often maternal.”
She also read a scene from her novel “Beloved,” saying “language rickets the racial relations.” The scene involved a black woman and a white woman who “know, if they had been of the same race, they might have, could have, would have stayed together longer.”
“I think I know why African women writers try to narrow the divide than try to understand it, but I leave it to others to understand the esoteric that exists in literature,” she said.
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