For the Love of Literature

BY KHADIJA POUNSEL

Remembering Toni Morrison

I remember getting the news. I remember where I was: at the stove. I remember how I heard: my phone pinged, a new email message. I remember my breath … it hitched when I read the words: TONI MORRISON GONE AT 88. It has been five years. August 5, 2019 to be exact, though it feels like yesterday. A few days after Morrison’s passing, I wrote about being a writer in a reflection about the Nobel Prize winner: How to be a writer? One way I’ve seen is to “Toni” it. Have a day job and write when you can, after work and while raising a family.

I grew up in a house full of books. Morrison’s were there on the bookshelves. The original book jackets are etched into my memory. I read them with difficulty, with ease, with curiosity, with devotion as I became a woman. And even more when I became a grown woman. 

There are many definitions for rebirth. Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as a new or second birth, spiritual regeneration, renaissance, revival. Cambridge English Dictionary defines it as a new period of something’s growth, or a time when something that was popular in the past becomes popular again.

Those are good, but I fancy another word that feels close to it—awaken. Perhaps because, as I thought on the five-year anniversary of Morrison’s passing, a sense came to the forefront. The sense of sight. It was wrapped in my silent declaration, a prayer: I want to really see. And then an answer straight from Morrison’s blueprint: wake up. And I did.

I had missed it until now, though I wrote it: How to be a writer? One way I’ve seen is to “Toni” it. Have a day job and write when you can, after work and while raising a family. I had focused on Morrison’s timeline and milestones (and my own). I had replayed her eloquent rebuttals to critics (works of art, in and of themselves). 

I was reading, watching and writing, but it was not until I sat down to write this reflection that I awakened and recognized that I had been “being a writer” the way Morrison had initially—writing around work and family. This and that. Even though I had admired the method on Morrison, I had not given myself the same stamp of appreciation for this method of being a writer, the way I had given it to the beloved author. Wow, awaken, indeed. My heart is grateful and glad. Thank you for helping me see me anew, Ms. Morrison. I’m much obliged.

Loving literature,

Khadija Pounsel