Toni Morrison: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations

by Toni Morrison

So the important thing is not to start with white value systems and then see how blacks reflect off them.

I think that forced to make a choice between my sons and feminists…If I do, it will not be the latter.

Could you expand on your answer that black women could use the absence of a man as a resource for independence?

You don’t wipe out a culture. You don’t wipe out the ethnic quality. You certainly don’t address yourself to a parallel or dominant culture. Some black writers did. Much of what was written during the Harlem Renaissance was written with white readers in view, very sort of “let me show you how exotic I am.” You can always hear that voice.

Maybe so. We’ve been cut down to screen size, and to short articles. Dwelling in the life of a complicated person, over a complicated period, in fiction, is not in vogue. It’s

black work beyond black self-flagellation, the kind of entertainment that you felt was being encouraged among black writers by white editors or the white society.

They will be stronger, and they will be delicious to read. But part of that availability and accessibility is because six or seven black women writers, among whom I am one, have already been there and tilled the soil.