Toni Morrison: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations

by Toni Morrison

The idea of conflicting modes of life existing in the same place has always been a troublesome thing in this country.

The enemy is not men. The enemy is the concept of patriarchy, the concept of patriarchy as the way to run the world or do things is the enemy, patriarchy in medicine, patriarchy in schools, or in literature.

I do know that no one parent can raise a child completely. But it is also true that two parents can’t do it either. You need everybody. You need the whole community to raise a child. And one parent can get that community. You have to work at it. You

Anybody who sets out and writes a universal novel has written nothing. The more concentrated it is in terms of its culture the more revealing you find it, because you make those connections. You see, there are more connections among us than differences, and that is the point. You don’t wipe out a culture. You don’t wipe out the ethnic quality.

TONI MORRISON: Love. We have to embrace ourselves. Self-regard. I remember James Baldwin said once, “You’ve already been bought and paid for, your ancestors already gave it up for you. It’s already done. You don’t have to do that anymore. Now you can love yourself. It’s already possible.”

MOYERS: The master narrative. What is—that’s life? MORRISON: No, it’s white male life. The master narrative is whatever ideological script that is being imposed by the people in authority on everybody else. The master fiction. History. It has a certain point of view.

And I’m not casting blame. I’m just trying to look at something without blinking, to see what it was like, or it could have been like, and how that had something to do with the way we live now.

I mean, if you can find police still saying they thought a candy bar was a gun, or they thought whatever they thought—things that would never be coherent if they had shot a white kid in the back. Could they tell those parents, “It looked like a gun to me, but it was a Mars bar”? It’s just surreal. So that is what they are prey to.

MORRISON: One of the most articulate, provocative students I had was Stokely Carmichael. He was really clever, very smart and fun…Claude

MORRISON: Yeah, they hated it. The nicest thing I ever heard wasn’t from a critic, it was from a student who said, “I liked The Bluest Eye, but I was really mad at you for writing it.” And I said, “Why?” And she said, “Because now they will know.”