When My Writing Grows Up

Toni Morrison is just about the only author who forces me to think about every word I'm reading, feeling, seeing unfold before my eyes. She is the only author, at this moment, who has made me cry while reading a story. I've come close with Arundhati's God of Small Things. I've experienced sorrow, loss and anxiety while reading the novels of Olympia Vernon. I have read all of her novels and have found a few short stories online but must admit that A Killing in This Town was hard, very hard. But so far, can't nobody do me like Toni.

I read and re-read Ms. Morrison's novels. I've read Beloved 6 times, Jazz 4 times and The Bluest Eye twice, I think. Her novels are like the Bible, with each read you find something new (perhaps depending on the point and time you are deep or wading through life). I read the Song of Solomon, years ago. The first time, I admit to skipping a few pages. Afterwall, Morrison tends to go on and circle around and around an event, description, etc. But my first read of Song of Solomon was at a much younger age. Recently, I re-read it again (#3). Once again, I found myself feeling, almost becoming, the characters. I cried with Pilate . . . found myself pressing the book to my chest when I arrived at pages 316 - 319, particularly when she bursts into the funeral home shouting, "Mercy!" as though it were a command. . . Her earring grazed her shoulder. Out of the total blackness of her clothes it blazed like a star. The mortician tried to approach her again, and moved closer, but when he saw her inky, berry-black lips, her cloudy, rainy eyes, the wonderful brass box hanging from her ear, he stepped back and looked at the floor. "Mercy?" Now she was asking a question. "Mercy?":

"My baby girl." Words tossed like stone into a silent canyon. Suddenly, like an elephant who has just found his anger and lifts his trunk over the heads of the little men who want his teeth or his hide or his flesh or his amazing strength, Pilate trumpeted for the sky itself to hear, "And she was loved!"

So that is why I say, when my writing grows up, I want it to be like Toni Morrison's. I can't be her. Nor can I be Ms. Vernon or Roy. I admire them as writers so very much. But within my own right, I can aspire to be as great (if not greater).