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"On Writing and Black Literature" by Lilia Melani (Brooklyn College)
For Morrison, "all good art has been political" and the black artist has a responsibility to the black community. She aims at capturing "the something that defines what makes a book 'black.' And that has nothing to do with whether the people in the books are black or not." She thinks that one characteristic of black writers is "a quality of hunger and disturbance that never ends." Her novels "bear witness" to the experience of the black community and blacks in that community. Her work "suggests who the outlaws were, who survived under what circumstances and why, what was legal in the community as opposed to what was legal outside it." In the past, music expressed these things and "kept us alive. Unfortunately music no longer serves this function and other forms of expressions, like the novel, are needed."
Morrison wants her prose to recreate black speech, "to restore the language that black people spoke to its original power"; for her, language
Morrison wants her prose to recreate black speech, "to restore the language that black people spoke to its original power"; for her, language
is the thing that black people love so much--the saying of words, holding them on the tongue, experimenting with them, playing with them. It's a love, a passion. Its function is like a preacher's: to make you stand up out of your seat, make you lose yourself and hear yourself. The worst of all possible things that could happen would be to lose that language.
Her prose has the quality of speech; Morrison deliberately strives for this effect, which she calls "aural literature." She hears her prose as she writes, and during the revision process she cuts phrasing which sounds literary or written rather than spoken. She rejects critics' assertions that her prose is rich; to those who say her prose is poetic, she responds that metaphors are natural in black speech.
Morrison wants readers to participate in her novels, to be involved actively. Readers are encouraged to create the novel with her and to help construct meaning. She uses the model of the black preacher who "requires his congregation to speak, to join him in the sermon, to behave in a certain way, to stand up and to weep and to cry and to accede or to change and to modify." She wants readers to say amen. Thus, her writing is meant as a communal experience, a sharing of passion and ideas and responses, with her holding the reader's hand during the experience. One small example of her encouraging reader participation is her not using adverbs like "softly" or "angrily" to describe characters' speeches; the reader should recognize/feel the speaker's emotion from the writing.
She uses magic, folktales, and the supernatural in her novels because
Morrison wants readers to participate in her novels, to be involved actively. Readers are encouraged to create the novel with her and to help construct meaning. She uses the model of the black preacher who "requires his congregation to speak, to join him in the sermon, to behave in a certain way, to stand up and to weep and to cry and to accede or to change and to modify." She wants readers to say amen. Thus, her writing is meant as a communal experience, a sharing of passion and ideas and responses, with her holding the reader's hand during the experience. One small example of her encouraging reader participation is her not using adverbs like "softly" or "angrily" to describe characters' speeches; the reader should recognize/feel the speaker's emotion from the writing.
She uses magic, folktales, and the supernatural in her novels because
that's the way the world was for me and for the black people I know. In addition to the very shrewd, down-to-earth efficient way in which they did things and survived things, there was this other knowledge or perception, always discredited but nevertheless there.
Her family talked about their dreams in the same way they talked about things that really happened, and they accepted visitations as real. Morrison's style combines these unrealistic elements with a realistic presentation of life and characters . This mixture has been called "magical realism." Initially she objected to the label "magical realism," feeling it diminished her work or even dismissed it. Now, however,she acknowledges that it does identify the supernatural and unrealistic elements in her writing. In The Bluest Eye the "magical" appears in the failure of marigolds to bloom and the belief by some members of the community in Soaphead Church's powers.
According to Morrison, another characteristic of black writing is a distinctive irony. She's not sure that it is different from irony in white literature, and she can't describe it. It's not humor, not a laughing away of troubles. What it is is this:
According to Morrison, another characteristic of black writing is a distinctive irony. She's not sure that it is different from irony in white literature, and she can't describe it. It's not humor, not a laughing away of troubles. What it is is this:
taking that which is peripheral, or violent or doomed or something that nobody else can see any value in and making value out of it or having a psychological attitude about duress is part of what made us stay alive and fairly coherent, and irony is part of that--being able to see the underside of something, as well.