Morrison’s letter to Obama
Category: News and Politics

Legendary novelist and editor Toni Morrison's endorsement of Barack Obama is obviously not significant for her ability to move voters at the polls, which is not proven and probably not likely to be proven. But given her perceived attachment to the Clintons—Bill, she famously once called America's first black president; and Hillary she has been close to in the past—we thought it worth printing in full the letter of endorsement she sent to the Illinois senator, as released by the Obama campaign:

Dear Senator Obama,

This letter represents a first for me--a public endorsement of a Presidential candidate. I feel driven to let you know why I am writing it. One reason is it may help gather other supporters; another is that this is one of those singular moments that nations ignore at their peril. I will not rehearse the multiple crises facing us, but of one thing I am certain: this opportunity for a national evolution (even revolution) will not come again soon, and I am convinced you are the person to capture it.

May I describe to you my thoughts?

I have admired Senator Clinton for years. Her knowledge always seemed to me exhaustive; her negotiation of politics expert. However I am more compelled by the quality of mind (as far as I can measure it) of a candidate. I cared little for her gender as a source of my admiration, and the little I did care was based on the fact that no liberal woman has ever ruled in America. Only conservative or "new-centrist" ones are allowed into that realm. Nor do I care very much for your race[s]. I would not support you if that was all you had to offer or because it might make me "proud."

In thinking carefully about the strengths of the candidates, I stunned myself when I came to the following conclusion: that in addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don't see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it. Wisdom is a gift; you can't train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace--that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom.

When, I wondered, was the last time this country was guided by such a leader? Someone whose moral center was un-embargoed? Someone with courage instead of mere ambition? Someone who truly thinks of his country's citizens as "we," not "they"? Someone who understands what it will take to help America realize the virtues it fancies about itself, what it desperately needs to become in the world?

Our future is ripe, outrageously rich in its possibilities. Yet unleashing the glory of that future will require a difficult labor, and some may be so frightened of its birth they will refuse to abandon their nostalgia for the womb.

There have been a few prescient leaders in our past, but you are the man for this time.

Good luck to you and to us.

Toni Morrison

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50 years of Little Rock

9/22/1957

little by little...

still we rock! and we're solid as a rock! aight?

Toni's page blogger

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Let’s plant trees in Africa!

Let's plant trees in Africa!

Hi everybody
I found this out and thought you guys might be interested even in knowing that these things exists!

you can actually help planting trees in Africa, everybody's mother land!

go and find it out at
www.tree-nation.com

I just planted one!
Let's breathe!

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Zula's Essay

THANKS ZULA, YOU DA BEST SISTA!

Many characters in The Bluest Eye are involved in a desire. Pecola for love and identity, Cholly for his father, Claudia for meanings, Soaphead for a place.


Pecola Breedlove. She is ugly. Morrison takes this poor, innocent, ugly, little black girl and shows the devastating effects of daily events. Remember when she went in the store to buy some candies after saving those three pennies, her feelings and the total absence of human recognition from the shop owner. She leaves the store and feels an inexplicable shame. She is then filled with anger. An innocent act of going to the store and buying candy, an act usually filled with happiness and anticipation, has turned into one of shame and anger. All this because she is an ugly black girl who does not meet society's standards. Pecola represents, children, Blacks, and females who were devalued in American culture in the 40'.

Oh yes, the society influences the individual. At the time the standard beauty was white skin, blond hair, and blue eyes. Pecola didn't meet the standard she was ugly. And that is why she began wishing for blue eyes. She thought that only if she had those beautiful, blue eyes she would no longer be thought of as "ugly" or "dirty", but rather as "pretty" and "beautiful".

She is isolated. Trying to understand why she is despised and ignored, by her schoolmates and teachers. Why do they mock her?
"Her schoolmates named her darker shade of skin as too ugly to accept".
That is one of the reason she desires blue eyes so much. With blue eyes she would be beautiful and popular, people would like her and treat her better. Beauty equal happiness.

This lack of beauty even intruded upon her family life. Pecola's mother finds her too ugly to love. Although her parents had their own problems, maybe if Pecola was beautiful, they may have treated her better. They may have paid her more attention and be less abusive of her.

She is alone, she needs to be loved and encouraged as a young child. Her family is indifferent, her teachers dislike her, her classmates ridicule her, people hate her.
Her role models are three prostitutes. These women, Miss Marie, Miss Poland, and Miss China, gave her a bit of attention and entertainment. She is accepted by those three women who themselves are outcasts by society.

Her only real friends are Frieda and Claudia MacTeer. But they are powerless.

All of the isolation escalates when her father rapes her. Her father is full of rage from his unsatisfying life. So he drinks, and it is this rage that rapes her.
Whatever strength she had left is ripped away from her in this act of violence.

She becomes pregnant and leaves school. She develops an imaginary friend to whom she speaks about her "new blue eyes." Soaphead Church, the town Psychic and Spiritualist, who convinced her that if she fed an old dog some food, she would be given blue eyes. She fed the dog and after convulsing for several minutes, he died. He validated her wish for blue eyes. With her new friend, Pecola talks about how blue and beautiful her eyes are and how jealous everyone is of them.


She ends up going crazy, "walking up and down, up and down, her head jerking to the beat of a drummer so distant only she could hear. Elbows bent hands on shoulders, she flailed her arm like a bird in an eternal, grotesquely futile effort to fly"(p 204).

At the end of the book she is isolated from the town both physically and emotionally. Her life is ruined as a result of society's placing of beauty on such a high standard.

We are all victims of our society in some ways. In the "Bluest eye" society has a standard of beauty, Pecola does not meet this standard. Her ugliness makes people in her town hate her. She is raped by her father and becomes pregnant and begins her descent towards madness.


Toni Morrison also says in this book that Sooner or later, most African American females must wrestle with the standard of beauty established by mainstream culture, which often lies in stark contrast to who and what they are and can be. Not to confront this dilemma can lead to maddening…

'The Bluest Eye' may be simpler than her later works. But we believe it, we are with Pecola, we understand her feelings, her dream, her fear, and her hopes. This book gives you a greater sense of self worth.

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from an Interview

Thank you ZULA!

"I think I merged those two words, black and feminist, growing up, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and very aggressive and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and manage homes. They had enormously high expectations of their daughters, and cut no quarter with us; it never occurred to me that that was feminist activity. You know, my mother would walk down to a theater in that little town that had just opened, to make sure that they were not segregating the population -- black on this side, white on that. And as soon as it opened up, she would go in there first, and see where the usher put her, and look around and complain to someone. That was just daily activity for her, and the men as well. So it never occurred to me that she should withdraw from that kind of confrontation with the world at large. And the fact that she was a woman wouldn't deter her. She was interested in what was going to happen to the children who went to the movies -- the black children -- and her daughters, as well as her sons. So I was surrounded by people who took both of those roles seriously. Later, it was called "feminist" behavior. I had a lot of trouble with those definitions, early on. And I wrote some articles about that, and I wrote "Sula," really, based on this theoretically brand new idea, which was: Women should be friends with one another. And in the community in which I grew up, there were women who would choose the company of a female friend over a man, anytime. They were really "sisters," in that sense."

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