♪ ♪ ♪ Beryl> Ready?

When you write are you conscious of a Toni Morrison style?

Toni> Recently, I began to think about it.

I hadn't been because each book seemed to me so clearly to demand a certain way of telling it.

But now I recognize the fact that there is a style that is to say (giggles) This may not sound right but I could recognize my writing.

Beryl> You know that it's Toni Morrison's when you read it.

Toni> Right.

You know, it's not like anybody else's.

Beryl> And so do your readers.

Toni> I think so.

That's right.

Salandra> I was driving Beryl to a community engagement event during a storm.

She told me, she'd had a chance to interview Toni Morrison for a segment on her show, Art's the Thing.

Toni Morrison?!

I was both excited and curious.

With my eyes attentive to the road and my ears, attuned to Beryl, I listened to her talk about the ETV archive.

♪ SCETV's archive is over 60 years old.

It holds interviews from beloved South Carolinians and folks journeying through new stories about milestone events in our state.

And it showcases the creativity of South Carolinians.

The archive has moved from our original location on Millwood Avenue in Columbia, South Carolina, to our current home on George Rogers Boulevard, with several stops in between.

This left some media artifacts vulnerable.

I needed to know if the Toni Morrison interview overcame these challenges.

With the help of SCETV digital archivists, I learned that the videos were indeed documented in our catalog.

They had call numbers.

Were the physical tapes actually in the vault?

We were able to find one of the tapes.

That's one hurdle crossed.

Next up, converting the tape to digital.

♪ Now, the tape that we found was not.

The finished program that aired on Art's the Thing.

♪ What we found, however, was raw footage which ended up offering some unexpected surprises.

♪ I knew I couldn't keep this to myself.

I decided to call up a few writers, educators and community leaders impacted by Morrison's work for their insights.

This is Echoes and Insights.

Episode One: Toni Morrison, interviewed by Beryl Dakers at the Russell House Bookstore, University of South Carolina, April 20th, 1983.

Beryl> The past informs the present and future.

I obviously believe that you need to know about what's gone on in the past, and if you have an opportunity to listen to the words of a master, their own words, not what somebody else has written about them but what they said, then that's, that's just pure gold.

So why wouldn't you use it?

Toni Morrison, what prompted you to become a writer?

Toni> I started writing really after I was 30.

I never thought about it as a very young person and longed to be a writer.

And I think reading led me to it because I wanted to read a certain kind of book that I hadn't read, couldn't find, didn't think had been written, in fact, that it was a book in which young Black girls were not peripheral or backdrop or human interest, that they were essential people in the book.

So...I began to toy with the story and then make it into a book like that.

And I really do think that one of the reasons I did it was because I wanted to read it.

When I got finished with it.

Nikky Finney> To listen to her on this soil talk about her work, I don't know.

I thought it was incredibly precious.

It was a lost jewel, The kind of writer that Morrison was then in that moment that she came here and then became... was something that I felt like should have been better seen across the state, better known about.

To know that she was here talking with another Black woman who is... consequential in my life, Beryl Daker's.

I grew up watching Beryl for all kind of streams as a Black woman journalist.

Beryl> I began my broadcast career in commercial radio and television, and I had done that for several years.

The last year I had the opportunity to delve into doing documentaries, and I discovered that I really had a passion for longform programing.

So when the opportunity arose, that allowed me to go to South Carolina ETV, then I thought, this is a new challenge, but one that will allow me to better explore things that I'm interested in and to bring a fuller picture to the fore.

(tone) ♪ February is Black History Month, and tonight "Art's the Thing" provides a sampling of traditional Black art forms.

One of the oldest art forms is the traditional art of storytelling, and two persons who have done much to preserve it are the dynamic acting duo Ossie Davis and his wife, Ruby Dee.

We talked with them briefly during a recent visit to the University of South Carolina, where they were guests of the Afro-American Student Association.

Arts the Thing was the first statewide arts oriented program, and it wasn't just visual arts, it was performing arts and musical arts and writers and folks of every possible artistic discipline.

Toni Morrison was in town to speak at the University of South Carolina.

Host> This is Toni Morrison from New York.

She wrote Tar Baby .

She's going to read to us from a chapter called... "Going Back to Eloe", I guess.

Toni> Yeah.

Host> All right.

Toni> Okay.

"This is a town?

", Jadine shouted.

"It looks like a block, a city block in Queens."

"Hush up", he said, squeezing her waist.

"This is not only a town, it's a county seat.

"We call it, the city."

Beryl> I learned that she was going to be doing a book signing.

I was delving mostly into arts and humanities programing at the time, and certainly if an artist of that statue was going to be in town, I was going to attempt to do the interview.

So... that was a no brainer.

♪ What I remember is the excitement of being able to interview someone like Toni Morrison.

I mean, I'm a product of the movement, as it were.

And so, writers and poets were very integral parts of the movement.

So we were familiar with the works.

And knowing that Toni Morrison was coming to Columbia and we had the opportunity to sit down with her one on one.

I mean, that was just a privilege.

You ready?

Okay.

Slate, Interview with Toni Morrison, Writer... (C rew member speaks off screen) ...don't start (laughs) Random House, editor.

>> So the first thing that came to mind is, man, this just looks like two sisters, two Black women that are just about to have a meaningful connection.

So I appreciated seeing the humanness of both of them before the cameras were rolling.

>> One of the things that resonated with me about that conversation is before they even start Mrs. Dakers is saying to someone off camera, Do you think we should say something to the people, whoever they were off camera in the bookstore or library, if they could keep it down a little.

And that resonated with me.

And it reminded me of my own experience here in South Carolina as a Black woman.

(indistinct conversations in background) Beryl> I may... (laughing) Crew member> Quiet please.

Hold the noise down.

(conversations continue) Beryl> Mrs. King, Mary, would you ask them to keep it down for just a second and we'll be through.

Johnson> There are people who maybe don't recognize that Ms. Morrison is in the room and they are still carrying on with whatever business they have.

And had I've been blessed enough to be there, noise would not have been the issue.

I might have been too close trying to listen.

But I think that, that small interaction at the very beginning just demonstrated to me that no matter what level of accomplishment you have, there are these distractions that may be in the background.

And I thought the way that they handled that conversation by continuing even with some of the background noise and all of that was beautiful to see.

>> It was the visual of these two Black women, right.

And where they were in their careers and how the mutualness of the climb.

The media professional who's providing space for the writer to be known, to be heard, to get the word out about, you know, her work and everything.

But at the same time, and then you have the writer who's saying yes to the interview and giving the journalist an opportunity to expand her portfolio.

And so, it's like you're feeding each other and supporting each other and you have this moment in time of these two women who have more career to have.

And, you know, and everything.

But at that time, they're...they're walking together in their own realms, you know, just building and climbing and just the together... the connectivity of that, I think, is... is really powerful because we experience it all the time.

We're experiencing it right now.

Dunn> The poise of both of them that remind me so much of what happens internally for me when I am having conversations or doing interviews.

So I saw a bit of myself.

And so I think there was a moment of just kind of validation that I'm on the right track, as well.

Toni> It's all about New Orleans at the turn of the century.

(laughs) Beryl> That's exciting.

Do you think it's that easy to transfer from one medium to the other?

Toni> No.

I had a rough time with the actual drama.

Beryl> You have to keep talking to it.

Toni> I had a lot of...

Crew member> ...keep talking.

Toni> I'm talking.

I had a lot of trouble with... the form...the form of the play.

>> This interview with Ms. Dakers channeled thoughts about not who I was, but who I am and who I want to be.

When I met her, I was able to meet Ms. Dakers, and immediately I told her about how much I admired just the... poise, and aire of distinction.

And there was immediate sense of reverence that I felt in seeing her and Toni Morrison share that space and even coming.

I don't know if this was intentional, but coming in coordinated outfits.

Beryl> When I got up to get dressed that morning, I'm not very much of a fashion mogul, so I typically would wear a suit, but I needed to perk it up some.

And the royal blue blouse just seemed to be something that sort of suggests that, you know, I'm interviewing royalty.

This is special.

And so imagine my surprise when she arrives and I find out she is attired in a blouse almost identical in color, so we sort of laughed about it.

And I said, "Well, I see you got the fashion memo today."

And she said, "Yes, you did, too."

And that's...that, that got us off on a good foot because we realized that in some distant universe, our spirits were already aligned.

>> It was an interview of love of each other, of sisterhood.

That's what I first thought of when I saw them sitting together, two sisters having a conversation about us.

Beryl> When you write, you write about Black experiences But your books, for some reason have found a lot of acclaim with general audiences, with White audiences in particular.

A lot of Black writers have not been able to do that.

What accounts for your success in this area?

Toni> Well, I don't know.

I mean, I, I think with my own work, I try very hard to fully realize the specific... the exclusively Black, the exclusively personal recollection converted into art.

And the more you hone in on the differences, the more likely it is that it transcends its parochial, regional or ethnic limitations and becomes universal.

It's when you try to write the universal novel that is sort of is watery or fades away and doesn't appeal to anybody.

But more important than that, if the address, the person to whom you are speaking is inward, it has an authenticity and a sound that not only do the people who are, who share your background, but the people outside of it recognize the authenticity.

If you read a Russian novel, he's not writing for Americans, He's writing for something very peculiar, and if it's something, that's the drama.

That's the peculiarity.

If you go around it, the other way around, as there were many books written in Harlem Renaissance and earlier, very good, by very powerful writers, but they were addressing their remarks to, not Black people, but to a larger audience.

It doesn't mean they weren't successful.

It just means that they missed a certain kind of audience, which would be somebody like me.

Jenkins> I go back to authenticity because I think that... that's a foundational spirit with...with Morrison's works to write that in the books that I write, I'm going to be authentic in my representation of Black ways of being and thinking and moving and speaking.

Willis> Two words that come to my mind when I think about Toni Morrison's work and even some of the footage I've seen about her authenticity and the celebration of diversity.

So in that authenticity, I think when you show up in a space without code switching, without changing who you are, being consistently who you were, me to be in this world, not negating the importance of evolution, right, and developing yourself, but still showing up as your full self.

No longer can we leave pieces of ourselves in the car at the house, right?

Showing up with all your flaws and still being committed to connections with people.

I think that's when we had the opportunity to find commonalities in our strengths, but also in our opportunities.

Right?

Are like what I like to call strengths that we may overwork.

But another part that she mentioned was in accentuating differences, we've grown up in a world where all lives matter, and let's focus more on how we're the same.

We're a melting pot of America.

I challenge that and say, "No, we're gumbo."

I like mine think and chunky.

I want you to come with all your bits and pieces, right?

I want to know about your nuances.

I want to know what makes you different.

I don't want to create a monolithic community, a world where we are just stuck on what we're what we see in each other that's alike, because that's not rich.

That's not how we grow.

That's not how we evolve.

And so when we take our time, according to Toni Morrison, when we take the time to focus on the differences, to talk about those nuances, we have the opportunity to make and create authentic stories of connection.

Right!?

Because then you learn something about someone that you may not have ever known, and that's where authenticity starts.

Otherwise I'm just replicating another me.

And we don't need any more "mes" because I got me, I need to see you and I need to know how this puzzle fits so that we can do some great and powerful things together.

Boykin> I think what Morrison does very well that I admire is specifically the way she does it in Beloved is recovering that cultural memory and... constructing a world where that memory and that person can be humanized and not just be like that little factoid in the newspaper like that was a person and that person had feelings and emotions and fell in love and had struggles and grieved.

That's something that I attempted to do in my my book of poetry, because for me, it's the memories.

Not just my personal memories, but historical memories and cultural memories that are, you know, they're part of who we are.

Jenkins> The creative use of language and just the way that, that Black people have with words and expression in some ways, even as you're writing...it... other kinds of things, that there's a little bit of that flavor in it, in the way that they're writing and the... the way that the characters are expressing and talking amongst each other and everything that becomes recognizable to you.

And, and so in the way that writers like Morrison were writing, I saw my family's creative prose and ways with words, as well.

Toni> I wanted very much to record the world that I believed I saw in Black people.

So I wanted to record the way we spoke to one another.

The way my grandmother spoke was absolutely magical, the way my mother talked, the way my father talked, where they pulled their metaphors from, how they put those words together.

It was memorable what they said.

Those people had a language that was incredible.

And it just seemed to me that Black people that I knew relished it.

Plus, they always sounded always sounded to me like poetry.

It was the natural language of everyday people that all my life had overwhelmed me.

And it just seemed to me that almost nobody else spoke with quite that authority and that power and the images and the metaphors that they used, that you could actually see.

Beryl> The way she used metaphors, the way she used various tempos, the way she used different points of view in her writing.

I think there's so much to learn from her.

Toni> There may be the additional problem of identification only because sometimes people say, "I don't know anybody like that."

You know, it's like teaching Beowulf .

I refuse to accept all of those excuses.

I read Beowulf , the Book of Job.

I mean, reading something outside one's own personal experience is what reading is for.

And there is no ideal way to set it up except to say that to say if you really would like to read a book which reaffirms what you already know, then perhaps the comic strips is better for you.

If you are at all interested in the possibility of imagining not only the differences, but the ways in which human beings are like one another.

There is no color to loneliness and love and death and sorrow and jealousy and so on.

Nikky> She was always pulling to the surface a personality, a character that nobody else wanted to hear from.

Full stop.

Go to any of her books: the discarded person, the discarded Black girl.

The...the ignored, the never listened to pulled front and center given language, given dreams, given hurt, given imagination made into a full human being.

That is the legacy of Toni Morrison, and it stands to this day and will always stand because those of us who were looking for ourselves found ourselves in her books.

James> I could see myself, you know, as the little girl who not necessarily wanted blond hair and blue eyes.

I don't think that was in the forefront of my mind.

I don't think I was saying to myself, I want blond hair and blue eyes, but in some of the actions I would display would show that maybe I did want blond hair and blue eyes, right, to fit in with my my White peers.

I grew up as an Army brat.

So at this particular time in my life, when I was a young little girl, I was in Oklahoma.

So a lot of Native Americans and a lot of White people.

And I wanted to fit in and I wanted to play with my friends and fit in, and I gravitate towards White dolls.

And I'll never forget my mother when we went into a a store, a toy store, and she said, this is a beautiful doll.

And the doll looked like me.

I didn't want that doll.

I wanted the one with blond hair and blue eyes.

Tameka Nicholson> The idea of what beauty is and how do we define and establish our own personal beauty.

I can't have that conversation without talking about Cola.

That is a topic that presents itself so often as an adolescent.

And in my work with teenagers, just students trying to define who they are and define their beauty, that particular text it sheds light on what we value and how we place value on how others perceive us, right?

And so with teenage girls, a lot of times, they're in search of validation.

And when you're desperate for validation, you'll take it from anywhere, whether it's accurate or not.

Dunn> The most rewarding part of being connected and introduced to Toni Morrison's work, I was in Outward Bound at Payne College when I was told to read these books, and I remember I was nervous to be reading the way the text was written.

That was the first.

But then the second thing is I felt at home.

I felt at home in my identity.

I felt at home in my body.

But it also was very counter to the cultural or societal... like my socialization that I was in, currently in the middle of.

So being a dark skin girl, right, being a dark skinned girl, even within my own community, was not a pleasant experience growing up in the 70s and 80s.

And so while one part of me felt validated that right that that I could see myself in her work, the other part reminded me of my own internal I wish I was lighter, I wish I was...right, all of the I wish, I wish.

And I think the combination of that with just life and maturing and being around other people who have helped me to see the beauty in myself, helps me stand here today as a very different person, but absolutely as a dark skinned brown girl growing up, all of the language, all of the words about being too dark.

I mean, I got a forehead for the gods, right?

And I see it today and I honor it today.

But I wasn't always able to do that.

I was very self-conscious about it because it was always called out as a negative thing.

What's coming to my mind right now is how many of us Black girls that were little and going through what Pecola went through, still struggle with that into our adult years.

And the way we show up in meetings, the way we show up in professional spaces, the way we show up in our families is still some of the scarring from that.

Nikky> Part of what came at Morrison was don't...you can't say that.

Don't show that right now.

I mean, don't talk about...that's... We don't... we talk about that privately.

We don't talk about that in mixed company.

And baby, Morrison had mixed company, the highest of the high.

Right.

So there she was revealing, if you will, our deepest secrets about each other, the great intimacies that we would only reveal when we're playing spades.

What we in the church basement after church whispering to each other.

That's Morrison.

She was writing for us.

But this is not a Black planet.

And so when other people listened in and heard those things, I, to this day always wanted to tell her, It's all right.

>> 1980s, it was a very big era for Black women writers.

You know, it was... it was an era where they were, there were many people that were angry because they were like, these Black women are throwing out their dirty laundry, you know, and it was okay.

It was okay.

It wasn't dirty laundry.

It was just some viewpoints, some opinions, some feeling, some creativity that had not come out in so many of these Black male writing writers, in their books.

And so these Black women were flying.

You had into Ntozake Shange.

You had Alice Walker, you know, and then Terry McMillan, you know, you had all these sisters coming out with these books, and some of these books were making them angry.

I remember going to see For Colored Girls, and I may have been about 15 or something like that, and watching grown men get up and leave the theater because they were so angry at this play, at this play.

And that said something.

But this also said that these women had the freedom and somebody was publishing them, thank you very much, to allow them to put out these words, Langston Hughes edited the best stories of Negro writers, and he talked about a young Alice Walker in this book.

And it was amazing that he was... he recognized Alice Walker.

But you had these women writers, these Black women writers who were powerful with their words, and they were hitting and they were smacking and they were slapping, but they were loving.

Johnson> So what I take from Toni Morrison's work and I embarked on this journey of reading all of Toni Morrison's work this year in 2023, was the importance of demonstrating that Black girls are not a monolith.

So one of the things that comes out in the interview from ETV and then also in many of her other works, is that we are different.

We are special.

We are unique no matter what our experiences have been in life.

We are not a monolith.

We don't all think the same, talk the same, care about the same things.

And for me, seeing that as a young girl, as a young woman, now as a wife and a mother and a professional has been incredibly important because as I think oftentimes we get put into these boxes right.

There are these tropes around Black women that pervade even in 2023.

What she does so masterfully to me, is demonstrate the varied human experience of Black women.

>> Someone like Morrison comes along from Ohio, who I think embraces the fact that she's going to often set her tales in places where they are sort of middle spaces.

That says something not just about her experience, but about what she wants us to see.

And I think she wants us to see the ways that we are connected, no matter where we are.

>> The way that she brings you in to the conversation through the landscape, through the nature of things, right, brings you in to want to be there, in the middle of it, though it's the worst place to be.

Beryl> Should a writer.

then write about or out of his or her own experience?

Toni> Or imagination He doesn't have to do any of that.

I live a very uneventful life in every way.

Beryl> And your characters, lead just the opposite?

Toni> Oh, yes.

That's where all the excitement is, you know.

But you have to be able to imagine it.

You don't have to experience it in a literal sense, but to experience it in an imaginative sense, too.

Think it up.

Sustain it.

Surrender yourself to it, and... and live with those people under those circumstances for a while.

And in that sense, yes, you feel as though you're writing out of... their experience is revealed to you via your own imagination and invention.

And for me, it's much more telling and much more exciting than a real adventure.

Or I mean, that I have had, my own experiences are nothing as interesting (giggles) as the ones I invent.

Tolson> We have an opportunity to expand our imagination and take it to another place.

We also have to appreciate and know who our ancestors are and how sometimes they come back.

They come back, even the babies.

They come back.

Willis> Beloved and the story of that mother in her trauma and how it bled through her family is one that I think we can apply to so many different realms, regardless of your race, regardless of your religion, regardless of your family status.

I think she was able to blend beautifully and so intelligently, so many different themes that can apply to life and that prism changes as you grow.

And so it's important when you find texts like that, leave it on your bookshelf.

Come back to it in ten years, you find something different in it, or you're even able to see the growth in you.

That's the beautiful part.

That's the exciting part.

So write in those margins, give your younger self an opportunity to show itself 10, 20 and 30 years down the line, so you can then see how you, how you've developed, how you've grown, because unfortunately the mind, though it's vast, is short.

And so we sometimes have this revisionist imagination of, when I was 20, I wasn't like that.

I didn't think that, Yes, you did.

And so sometimes you need the primary sources to cite that you were a mess, too, and so that you can use that testimony to then touch those young people around you in a, again, authentic way.

Whitted> Morrison is someone who encourages us to think again, to rethink.

Obviously, she comes up with this term re-memory, reconsider, re-read.

For a lot of college students who are in a process of discovery and really taking a hard look in depth at some of these issues, Morrison is perfect for that, right?

She's challenging, but she rewards that challenge.

She's a writer who rewards readers who take that time.

James> When Toni Morrison forces us to look internally, it's not in a religious way.

It's in an ancestral way.

And...and that's reflected in her work, even in, you know, in Beloved, in Song of Solomon.

She brings our ancestors alive through her work and reminds us of who we are, and that's how we piece ourselves together.

Nikky> This was something that I needed back then, but I also need it now because my understanding of the South and my understanding of home was altered by that video clip, and I felt enriched in a way that I needed to hear Toni Morrison in that voice that only she can speak in, talk about her work, talk about what... talk about what, the world how the world, you know, saw her, but also talk about family and talk about beginnings and her family, her grandparents having left the South in the Great Migration.

It was a return for me, not, you know, not necessarily South Carolina, but the South.

And there was so many of us who left.

So I felt like it was a missing piece of the puzzle that I needed to have in order to feel everything that I have always felt about Morrison's work and how it has impacted me every step of my career.

James> So I understand Morrison in the musical sense.

When I think of her, I think of spirituals.

Like I hear the echoes, I hear the, you know, the different baritone voices and the sopranos.

I hear like our ancestors singing.

So whatever she was creating, I'm sure the ancestors were there with her.

And it's some type of spiritual aspect to it that reminds us of old Negro spirituals.

Those high notes that she was talking about are angels.

Yeah, they're angels.

Nikky> And she doesn't talk about it in a autobiographical way, but that mother of hers comes through every other mother she fictionalized.

I know that.

I know that.

And I believe that, you know.

And so I just feel like she ended up probably writing about 30 Black mothers, but it all came from the source.

And you can you can tell that by that countenance and you can tell that by that personality and you can tell that by her understanding that she was never alone.

Beryl> I've got to ask you, how did you feel seeing yourself as the cover of Newsweek magazine?

Is that the ultimate recognition?

Toni> Well, there's fame and then there's status.

I liked the idea very much.

I liked the fact that the article had something to say not just about me, but about a lot of Black women writers who made it sound as though something extraordinary was happening with Toni Cade Bambara and Alice Walker and Gayl Jones, Paule Marshall and all these women.

So I liked that.

The cover, however, was important to me because on the day that I got the proof, my mother was in town and she didn't know that they were going to do that because we never knew that it was going to really be on the cover.

Sometimes they say that it and it never happens because breaking news takes precedence.

So my mother was there and I was able to hand her this (giggles) proof of myself with Newsweek at the top and absolutely overwhelmed her so that when I remember that moment, I always remember her face when she saw it.

That's how I felt.

It felt good because my mother was looking at it.

Dunn> I related in the interview of the moment of being able to show her mother, look at what I have been able to do because in my own life and in my own career, I've had those same moments when I'm on NBC.

I'm like, "Mom, look!

", when I got nominated for BET Her award, it's like, "Mom, look!"

And so the question that went through my mind when I was watching the interview was, I wonder what was underneath hers.

I am now a mother of a daughter, so I need to say that.

I have a 21 year old daughter now And my mother and I are now friends.

And that hasn't always been the case.

But what my mother has always been is she's always been super supportive, even when she gave me the hardest time, the hardest times that we have had to go to counseling to repair and talk about.

But now in my maturation, I'm like, Ha, you were just being my guard rail and for that I'm grateful.

Jenkins> I so appreciated, you know, her honoring her mom and, you know, in that way.

And it doesn't take away from the fact that you're, you're still tickled and just proud of getting this, you know, this cover of a major magazine.

But you never lose sight of the people that, you know, it really, really in your heart matters too.

And...and I do...I do think we, we see that you know and people joke all the time about like sports you know athletes and how you know, first thing they're like thanking their mom, you know, it's like that's the first person....

But that becomes...you know, that's the reality that we come from these whole histories of people that have...if not done anything or been able to give us anything but belief in us.

And that's something that a lot of the systems that we move through didn't.

Johnson> If I think about both Beloved and Home a couple of things stick out to me.

One is the importance of elders in our health care system.

Like I remember, we would get sick, we would call my grandmother first, because she had some home remedy or some suggestion that worked just as well, if not better than some of the things we would get from doctors.

And so one of the first things I would say is what I hope we don't use as a culture and as a community is just respecting and trusting the knowledge of our elders.

For me, sitting here today as a mother, as a person who was exposed to Toni Morrison's work at a very early age by parents who were definitely very sensitive to making sure I understood the world.

The concept of banning books as a parent, like, I don't...

I don't necessarily subscribe to those same beliefs, right!

But as a parent, what I do recognize is that there are some topics that are very challenging.

Adults don't always like to have hard conversations with themselves, let alone with children.

So on the one hand, what I will say is that I empathize with adults who are challenged by hard conversations.

On the other hand, you know, it is...it is easy to not be empathetic when these are not your lived experiences.

And what I think here in South Carolina and in our country and frankly, in our world, we benefit from having empathy for other people, but it is challenging.

We challenge our assumptions.

We challenge our comfort and who doesn't want to be comfortable.

And so it is hard, I think, for me, sitting here as a person who has dealt with misogyny, with racism, with some of the topics that come up in The Bluest Eye .

It is challenging for me to not be seen.

And I what I would anticipate from people who feel strongly that certain books should be banned, I can understand maybe why they don't want to see me.

They don't want to see some of those ugly parts of our nation's history, of our country's history.

And I heard Toni Morrison say this in an interview.

I don't know.

It's been years now that you know, people have a right to ban books in their homes, but what they don't have the right to do is ban books nationally, to ban books in other people's homes.

And I wish we could get to a point where no matter what our personal beliefs are in our homes, we don't want to impute our lived experiences onto the lives of others, because we're all different, we all have different experiences, and my experience doesn't have to be your experience.

And that to me is what makes our world beautiful.

But it also is the thing that makes it challenging.

And you know, we live in a world where some people don't want to be challenged.

Jenkins> Whether it's Morrison or hip hop culture, not all of everything they've created is controversial.

So that's one, right!

There's a lot of things in Morrison that can be shared and taught that isn't controversial.

There's a lot of hip hop.

There's been a lot of hip hop created over the 50 years that it has existed that can still be included and everything without it feeling like it's controversial.

So I reject even just that, just on the strength that you can't find pieces of either one of those things that's digestible for, you know, people that need it.

When I hear her talking about why she became a writer in the first place and that, that she did it because the book that she really wanted to read didn't exist.

Right!

I think when you look at the creation of hip hop culture, that, that is exactly the spirit and foundation of...of...of how it was created.

Those are conversations that young people absolutely need to have before they dive into a career to learn all the different ways that turns that your life can take and things that you can do.

And, you know, look at, you know, where did she go to college and what was she doing in college?

And then after college, what did she do?

And then how did she move here and there?

Like, have those conversations, studying people.

I was an achiever, like one of those high achieving students, learning people's life stories.

Biographies were also a big thing for me, you know, because it becomes this, this narrative like you, you want to be successful.

But then I wanted to... to learn the stories of people, other people who were successful.

What did they do and how did they live?

And, you know, what I'm saying, just, what turns did their life take That's a whole other thing.

And again, don't often hear or talk about it in school.

Nikky> Trusting what is inside you is the first order of business.

And so many times somebody giving a child or a young person permission.

Toni Morrison was given permission by her family, by her father, the iron worker, by her mother, who was a member of the AME Church in Lorain, Ohio, by her grandparents, who said, let's...let's leave here and go to a place where there's more opportunity by the King James version of the Bible, that Morrison, was in Morrison's house when she was growing up.

All those items became ways that she understood, I had permission to be this incredible mind and incredible woman that my parents raised me to be.

Whitted> One of the ways that Morrison shows up in young adult literature is through the kind of complexity that we're seeing now in literature designed for young people, which is really about teaching them lessons to how to grow and develop and all of those things.

But we, you know, in the past people have thought about those lessons as needing to have clear heroes and villains, so to speak.

And I think, Morrison teaches us and has taught those writers like Andy Thomas.

I'm also thinking about Jason Reynolds and...Jewell Parker Rhodes to show us that who we might villainize deserves a second look and deserves some understanding.

I mean, The Bluest Eye is one of the best examples of that.

Students are blown away when we are taken inside of the mind of Cholly Cholly's perspective.

Right?

And Morrison handles that so well.

And so I think a lot of really talented young adult writers are sort of adopting that kind of complexity.

And our our students, our children are better for it.

Beryl> When you write, do you find yourself competing with Toni Morrison?

Are you conscience of having to do as well or better than you've done before?

Toni> Oh, yeah.

It's...I don't know if I'm competing with the person,... Toni Morrison, but I know that I never want to write a book that does not present me with problems, artistic problems that are for me, more difficult, or at least I've never done them than the book I wrote before.

Each book that I have done has been enormously demanding on me in a very different way.

The language requirements of a certain idea are different from the other ones.

A book driven by a man, I had to change everything.

Whatever I learned from doing Sula was of no help to me in doing Song of Solomon, and what I knew in Song of Solomon really did not help me a great deal with what I wanted to do in Tar Baby, so that no matter what you learn, there's always another high note, another, for me, I set them up, I know, for myself, but it's true.

I'm always in competition with at least the sense of discovery.

I have to discover something about my craft in order for me to want to write in the first place.

Beryl> I would not have expected this interview to be brought out of the dungeon and into the light again, just because by the nature of broadcasting, you know, you're only as good as the last thing you did.

That's sort of the way it is.

And you do it and you spill your life's blood.

But then it's aired and it's gone.

And so, to have the the opportunity to revisit something that was important and to know that there may be interests in revisiting other things, other things that we are the keepers of, is, it's gratifying and...and...and it's exciting.

Lemons> I have a really big sense that what you've found you were supposed to find at the time that you were supposed to find it for us to find the present that is happening in that interview from the past, for people to keep on looking, searching, reading, for people to keep paying attention to their surroundings.

Jenkins> You all are uncovering this and you're like, "Oh my God.

This is amazing."

"We've got to get it out."

So, you know, and I think that's the work of a lot of of cultural education is helping people to understand and value the audacity in the, what we see as ordinary, the...the importance in the everyday life, the lived experience, the, the pictures, family pics, photos that we think only matter to us, how years later they can become absolute goldmines to other people because we never know where our lives go and who we become.

And even if it's valuable just for the people in our own families, the...the, the generations that come later, how they scour those old...black and whites and...and everything that that we might take for granted.

But they're really important.

And so just the documentation of any kind, I think is just so valuable to the lived experience.

James> Just for her to have the foresight to have the conversation with Toni Morrison and just with her work throughout the decades, bringing us the news, educating us.

Being the very important voice, not just representation of us, but being the voice of us, as well.

In the community it means a lot, and she's definitely a trailblazer because of that.

Beryl> Being able to look back at that interview now almost 40 years hence, and to feel that, hey, it's still stands up, that there's merit there.

That's a good feeling.

That's a really good feeling.

Whatever the venture, we wish you well and thank you, Toni Morrison.

♪ Salandra> I see ETV's vault as a goldmine of voices, experiences and promise.

What voice or voices will echo from the archive next.

Tune in to the next episode to find out.

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