One month after
being invited as a Principal Discussant to the Toni Morrison Biennial organized
by the Toni Morrison Society, I still cherish that experience.
My experience at the biennial reminded me of
the importance of maintaining the balance between male and female
energies. I was honored to meet the
editor of Toni Morrison, Errol McDonald.
I thought I remembered reading that McDonald edited Beloved and Jazz. When I was able to ask him about this, he
replied that he did not edit Beloved, but
he edited Paradise and Love. I wanted to ask him more questions about what it was like to edit
the fiction of Toni Morrison, but I was very conscious of my time and the time
of the brilliant people and brilliant energies that I was around. Angela Davis was at this conference and
shared that the book Morrison edited, Angela
Davis: An Autobiography, was written in the hills of Santiago de Cuba. “She convinced me that the book she was going
to publish was the book I wanted to write.
I spent six weeks in the mountains of Santiago de Cuba…in virtual
solitude with about 700 typewritten pages.”
I learned a lot in the breakout roundtable discussions on the second,
third, and fourth days of the biennial.
On the roundtable discussion on the first day, I learned a lot from
Faraha Norton who, like Professor Morrison, worked at Random House and saw
first hand the reality of “institutionalized racism,” which was a term coined
by Morrison’s editing that gained credence in Black Power:
The Politics of Liberation written by Kwame Ture and Charles V.
Hamilton. Norton said that while
Morrison was very influential as an editor in selecting books for Random House to edit and publish,
she was still less powerful than Jason Epstein who was editorial director at
Random House. Morrison was still less powerful
than Bob Bernstein who was president and CEO of Random House. In her book The Burglary, Betty Medsger writes about how J. Edgar Hoover up
until his death made sure that authors who were even remotely sympathetic to
communism were not published.
Both
Epstein and Bernstein as publishers had supported the McCarthyist-J. Edgar
Hoover-imposed dragnet against artists.
They also supported the very destructive U.S. foreign policy in the
1970s that was carried out by Kissinger against Cambodia and Chile. By the time Morrison joined Random House, the
purge against those who challenged the mainstream status quo had already taken
place, so that any serious change brought about by ordinary citizens as a
result of book reading would be minimal.
More needs to be written on this.
I glanced at an important book by the Toni Morrison Society President
Dr. Evelyn Schreiber called Race, Trauma,
and Home in the Novels of Toni Morrison, where she included a very powerful quote
by Morrison who was interviewed by Angels Carabi: “there are certain things that
are repressed because they are unthinkable, and the only way to come free of
that is to go back and deal with them…And that makes it possible to live
completely” (51). This quote really
spoke to me and reminded me of what novelist Paule Marshall said in her 1979
interview Alexis DeVeaux: “you have to psychologically go through chaos to
overcome it” (Hall & Hathaway, eds., p.49).
I appreciated
learning from a book talk by Dr. Dana Williams about Morrison’s time at Random
House. Dr. Williams shared her research from her upcoming book Toni at Random, and talked about Professor Morrison's efforts to promote, most memorably to me, They
Came Before Columbus by Ivan Van Sertima.
Williams talked about the difficulty that Morrison had in finding Black
historians and writers who would read and provide a favorable review of this
book by Van Sertima that forcefully argued the presence of African people in
the West centuries before Columbus. I
was surprised but not so surprised to learn that Dr. John Hope Franklin was one
of those scholars who declined to review Sertima’s book. This kind of decline reminds me of how
historians can sometimes behave territorial when it comes to engaging the work
of artists and authors.
I appreciated
listening to the panel on the morning of Saturday July 23rd that featured
novelists Edwidge Danticat and Tayari Jones, both of whom I talked to briefly
in the hotel lobby about an hour before their panel. I appreciated Tayari’s point that efforts to retaliate against the Dallas police
recalls groups in Morrison’s fiction, namely her third novel Song of Solomon, and the group she
described as the Seven Days. There are a lot of similarities between Micah
Xavier Johnson and Morrison’s Guitar in Song
of Solomon. Danticat mentioned that
Gavin Long’s life is very Morrisonian in the way that he wanted to publish a
particular kind of book the way that Morrison was clear about publishing
certain kinds of books while at Random House.
On the roundtable
discussion on the second day, I learned a lot from readers of Morrison talking
about how her fictional characters use violence as language. We mentioned specifically Pauline and Cholly
Breedlove in The Bluest Eye. Lavinia Jennings who is author of the
best review written on A Mercy, and
author of Toni Morrison and the Idea of
Africa, said that in all of Morrison’s work, she shows that the three most
destructive ideas in the human mind are: romantic beauty, romantic love, and
possessive love. Marie Umeh said she
asked Morrison her message in one of her novels and Morrison’s reply was “love
nothing.” Here Morrison is challenging the
notion of “love” as presented by the white mainstream. This kind of love is a verb that is based
primarily on the amount of capital exchanged, and is ultimately shallow and
materialistic.
I saw in person
for the first time scholars of Morrison that I had not met before, especially
Susan Neal Mayberry who wrote Can’t I
Love What I Criticize: The Masculine in Morrison, which I appreciated. I especially appreciated what Mayberry said
about Sula, and how she was punished
by the Bottom community for daring to act “like a man.” This reminds me of how I think Amy Ashwood
Garvey was treated by Marcus Garvey for taking sexual liberties that her time period restricted her from taking.
Besides meeting Dr. Schreiber, Professor Mayberry, Tayari Jones, Edwidge
Danticat, and Dr. Jennings, I had a brief yet interesting conversation with
Juda Bennett about his book Toni Morrison
and the Queer Pleasure of Ghosts. I
also had an interesting conversation with Jaleel Akhtar, and was able to read
select parts of his book Dismemberment in
the Fiction of Toni Morrison. He
gets the term “dismemberment” from the Frantz Fanon whom he quotes: “Morrison’s
fiction is replete with moments of Fanonian dismemberment.” But I was most interested in the point Akhtar
made about what Morrison was saying with her Peter Downes character in A Mercy: “Peter Downes sells the
argument of Africans-selling-Africans under the garb of a disguised apology in
order to convince Vaark: “Africans are interested in selling slaves…as an
English planter is in buying them.” In
my research, I found that this is something that Amy Ashwood Garvey discovers
first hand in her 1947 trip to the Gold Coast when researching the descendants
of her great grandmother, Grannie Dabas.
Part of this
biennial included an authors and editors luncheon which included a very very
inspiring talk by Chris Jackson, who is vice president and executive editor of
One World/Random House. Jackson edited Between the World And Me by Ta-Nehisi
Coates and is editing his next book. He
seems to replace the editorial role that Morrison played at Random House. When I read this, I immediately remembered
the One World logo that was on a lot of books, especially The Autobiography of Malcolm X As Told To Alex Haley and the
important function of imprints. This
also made me think of Elizabeth Nunez’s fictional exploration into the dynamics of
imprints in her very important 2011 novel Boundaries,
that I am now writing an article about.
In Chris Jackson’s luncheon talk, he said that “Toni Morrison is the
reason I do the work that I do.” He said
that he grew up in New York raised by a single mother and deeply steeped in the
religious tradition of the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
He also spent some time writing the publications of the Jehovah’s
Witnesses. What I found interesting
about his time writing their publications was how the funders ignored editorial
staff and vice versa. This provides an
amazing potential for the editorial staff to promote ideas that contradict and
subvert the worldview of the funders. J.
Edgar Hoover spent decades policing the editorial staff of all mainstream publishers
so that the funders’ worldviews never contradicted the worldviews of the
editorial staff. Jackson’s observation
of how the editorial staff at the Jehovah’s Witness publications ignored the
funders of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, reinforced his contempt for
capitalism. He also said that book
publishing is a business and part of the job is to be aware of the market. Even though one is aware of the market, the
most important lesson I got from his lecture is that “one should never
compromise one’s values for the values of the funders.” He said that the status quo is often a paper
tiger, and that mission oriented book publishing is at the end of the day,
despite the paper tiger, still sustainable.
I appreciated how
Chris Jackson recognized Ishmael Reed as an institution builder. Jackson noted how Reed started the Before
Columbus Foundation which gives the American Book Award. I was grateful to witness novelist Marlon
James earn the 2015 American Book Award for his novel about the forgotten
Jamaican youth called A Brief History of
Seven Killings. I met Karen from the
Cleveland Foundation’s Anisfield-Wolf Book Award who told me that they awarded
Marlon James with an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
This novel is a must read.
Jackson finished his talk underscoring the reality that mission based
publishing requires faith in the work and an understanding of the
audience.
My entire
experience I believe was embodied by what Morrison herself said in her essay “Rootedness:
the Ancestor as Foundation” about the importance of maintaining the balance
between male and female energies. At one
point in this essay, she described the diminishing of one of her character’s,
Reba’s abilities, because of “the absence of men in a nourishing way” in this
character’s life. Morrison later says
that her character Pilate represents “the best of that which is female and the
best of that which is male” (1071). She was later asked about developing a
specific Black feminist model of critical inquiry, to which she replied that
she thinks “there is more danger in it than fruit, because any model of criticism
or evaluation that excludes males from it is as hampered as any model of
criticism of Black literature that excludes women from it.”
Attacks Against Nate Parker
The way I see the
world after attending this biennial reminds me of the ways that white
mainstream society continues to try to promote “a Black feminist model of
inquiry” uniquely dedicated to silencing the artistic work of Black men. “A Black feminist model of inquiry” in and of
itself does not normally silence the artistic work by Black men, however the
shallow, flighty way it is being used by hack writers like Roxane Gay, Ibram
Rogers, and most recently by Michael Arcenaux, to silence the work of Nate
Parker is dangerous, destructive, only aids “the absence of men in a nourishing
way” which ultimately empowers the white mainstream.
If these hack writers cared anything about
the rape culture that they claim Parker promotes by his public response to his
1999 case, they would apply the same moral expectation and standard they expect
from Nate Parker to Roger Ailes. To Jeffrey
Epstein. To Bill Clinton. To Hillary Clinton.
The white
mainstream will not enumerate the crimes against women and children that these
wealthy men have committed, however these hack writers want Nate Parker to
publicly address the verdict and settlement and within one day become a one man
poster child for the immediate destruction of Western rape culture. The attacks against the character of Nate
Parker is similar to the destruction of the work of Bill Cosby. Although Cosby is facing trial for allegations of rape, his work which promotes the opposite has literally been erased from network television and internet. Bill Cosby’s work did not promote a rape
culture against women, however in the white mainstream’s court of public
opinion, he was a certified rapist and entire younger generations should be denied
the very important moral lessons of his work. They should suffer “the absence of men in
a nourishing way.” Morrison edited George Jackson's book Blood In My Eye. In his other book Soledad Brother, Jackson called Cosby "a running dog with the fascist" for choosing to play an intelligence agent in "I Spy." Morrison's editing allowed us different perspectives of Jackson and Cosby "in a nourishing way."
At this biennial
conference, attendees received a complimentary updated copy of The Black Book, which Morrison originally
edited in 1974 and of which Morrison was inspired to write her memorable novel Beloved. Thank you to Lynne Simpson for making this
complimentary copy possible. In this
complimentary copy of The Black Book that
the publisher Knopf provided however, the epigraph that was in a previous
edition by Bill Cosby was removed from this complimentary updated copy. Toni Morrison herself spoke to the
attendees and asked a simple question: “what happened?” The removal of Cosby’s epigraph speaks to the
ways that the mainstream promotes an “absence of men in a nourishing way,”
especially the absence of Black men whose work challenges the racist status
quo.
This “absence of
men in a nourishing way” is also being promoted by hack writers who choose to
attack Nate Parker’s character.
These hack writers
hold Parker to a moral standard that they would never hold to industrialists
like the Clintons who promote and practice a rape culture that continues today in
the form of U.S. imperialism.
The shallow application
of this inquiry continues to, as Christopher Columbus did and as Bartolomeo de
las Casas wrote about in Destruction of
the Indies, divide the indigenous and their leaders like Hatuey in order to
conquer us mentally to believe that the mainstream cares anything about changing
its endemic rape culture.
Notice that all of
these hack writers (Gay, Rogers, and Arcenaux) telling their readers not to
support Parker’s upcoming film Birth of A
Nation are all writers paid by capitalists, usually liberal capitalists, dividing-and-conquering in
typical Columbus fashion. Each of these
hack writers are paid by companies profiting from the same kind of imperialism
that the work of Nat Turner was designed to destroy.
Gay wrote her
piece for the New York Times which
has made a daily practice out of promoting U.S. imperialism across the globe by
feigning concern for women’s rights while refusing to cover the rape culture
within the U.S. military (see “Colombian Report on U.S. Military Child Rapes Not
Newsworthy to U.S. News Outlets: http://fair.org/home/colombian-report-on-us-militarys-child-rapes-not-newsworthy-to-us-news-outlets-2/).
Rogers wrote his
hack piece against Parker just after publishing his latest book by NationBooks
which, like the New York Times, promotes
imperialist profit by silencing messages like Turner’s.
Arcenaux wrote his
hack piece against Parker from complex.com, founded by the apolitical fashion designer
Marc Ecko and styled by Business Insider as “Most Valuable Startups in New
York.” Startups become startups by
supporting the imperialist economy based on the chattel slavery Nat Turner’s
work intended to demolish. Complex.com would
only benefit from bashing the revolutionary message of a Nat Turner that was trying
to destroy an economy based in chattel slavery.
Arcenaux can dress his critique of Parker in fancy attire, however his
critique is still a hack job that is trying to discourage the revolutionary
message of Turner’s revolt the same way the state of Virginia was trying to do
with Nat Turner.
In their faux
concern for the U.S. rape culture that is mum on the rape culture of the U.S.
military, Gay, Rogers, and Arcenaux in their attacks against Parker promote a
shallow application of “a Black feminist model of inquiry” that promotes “the
absence of men in a nourishing way.”
These hack writers
who apply Black feminist inquiry in a shallow way and say they’re not
supporting Parker’s film in the name of “ending rape culture,” are absolutely
hypocritical. They are the same hack
writers who tell you to support Hillary because “she is the lesser of two
evils,” and promotes a rape culture in the U.S. military like Hillary and her
supporter Arcenaux did when she turned a blind eye to the U.S. Sargeant Michael
Coen’s rape of Colombian women. Arcenaux
recently tweeted that shutting down the Clinton Foundation is “a stupid idea.” This is the same foundation that like
Christopher Columbus has raped the Haitian people, stole money intended for earthquake relief, profited from promoting
Henry Kissinger’s world order and desperately tries to convince the world that
spreading “democracy” is not the same as spreading a lethal white supremacist
capitalism that is killing the earth. These are the same hack
writers who tell us that Julian Assange is a rapist, based on unsubstantiated
evidence that was doctored by government agencies desperately seeking to
discredit him. By attacking the
character of Parker, these writers are encouraging specifically the absence of
Black men “in a nourishing way,” and continue the divide and conquer strategy
used by Columbus against our people.
This is an attack that Morrison’s work is dedicated to exposing and
ending.
This is an attack that is tired
and should completely be ignored. –RF.
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