An Eternal Gratitude

Grief has a way of entering the body and reminding it of all it forgot. It starts slowly and then encapsulates you in its intensity. Grief took hold of me yesterday, and showed me my history.

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A few months before I started boarding school, my mother handed me three books that she said were important to me as a young black girl who adored reading; an activity that we both acknowledge is my first love.

One of the books was Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.

I was 13.

When I first read Song of Solomon, I had no idea what I was reading. All I knew was that the language I read was utterly beautiful. Each sentence wove into another and I knew that the magnitude and layers of this work was going over my head. I finished it.

High school was a love affair of books, and if I was not doing homework, I was reading a book with a flashlight way past our lights out curfew. At times I would read in the closet, because I could turn on the light without getting in trouble.

I was 15.

Some people read books and then never read them again. Not me. I believe each new read gives me a message that I missed during the prior read. So at 15, when I picked up Song of Solomon again, I connected with a character named Hagar, who so desperately wanted to be loved by the black man she set her sights on. I identified with her utter confusion as a man who looked like her, rejected her. And as I learned about race, dating, and colorism at a white boarding school hours away from where I grew up, I understood how her confusion led to tragedy. In the meantime, I started to read more of Morrison’s canon. Sula and Bluest Eye were my next reads and I got to explore race and sexuality through two female protagonists and escape into their worlds, which somehow mirrored mine despite being years and miles apart.

I was 16.

I fought tooth and nail to get placed into AP English. I remember the white girls in my school being automatically placed into it, but I spoke to my teacher privately and told him to give me a chance. See, I didn’t tell him, but I knew I was the only girl in that class who knew how stories could save and change lives. Because every time I picked up a book, I was ensuring that I lived for as long as it took me to finish it, and then I would pick up another, thus prolonging my life. I knew none of those girls, some of whom I called friends, understood how that felt. He let me in the class.

I was 17.

Taking two English classes your senior year sounds crazy, unless you are like me and think it sounds awesome. My elective in the fall read Song of Solomon and I remember being in a room full of white girls arguing 10 out of the 11 of them down over a controversial scene in the book. My English teacher smirked as I stood my ground, while these girls called me immature and evil, simply because they didn’t understand the nuance of race. As much as my teacher tried to stay neutral, it was clear he was on my side, as well as the single white girl who stayed quiet during the debate. Later on that year, my AP English class read Song of Solomon, and this same teacher pulled me to the side and said we needed to pick another Morrison book for me to read, because he knew I was well versed in Song of Solomon. So for 1-2 months we met during lunch so he could teach me Beloved. I never told him how much his private lessons influenced my college career as an English major.

I went to college.

The essay I got an A on in my 1st semester of college, was on Toni Morrison’s Beloved, comparing it to the Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone. Those lessons from high school came in use quickly. This started a trend of me finding a way to bring blackness into my very white classes. Even on syllabi that had no black authors, I found a way to write almost every final paper about blackness and its pervasiveness in the work I digested.

In my spare time, I watched and read the essays, interviews, and speeches of Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, and etc. Reread Song of Solomon during holiday breaks and procrastination binges. I educated myself on the women who were my literary canon, much different from what my white liberal arts college called the literary canon.

My favorite author has always been Toni Morrison, who was so unapologetically black in her label as a black female american author. She didn’t try to shake off her labels, because those labels informed her work. She wrote so beautifully about and for black people. To be black and read her work, was to see yourself in a world that so desperately wanted you to be hidden. She wrote about me.

So I continued to write about black people. In papers, on my very first blog, and in the thesis I wrote which explored the traumas of black intimacy. But, let me move on.

I was 21.

How fitting that the last English class I would ever take, was a class called: Toni Morrison’s Novels. Taught by a black professor (Dr. Farah Griffin) who adored Morrison’s work. We read the entire Morrison canon, and our professor said she thought most people’s favorite Morrison book was the first one they read. She was right.

I didn’t know it back then, but when my mother handed me Song of Solomon at 13 years old, it changed my life. My life at that point had two factions: pre-Toni Morrison and post-Toni Morrison. The realization that I had a gift of language was influenced by reading a woman who proclaimed that she wanted to write the book she wanted to read.

I am 24.

Yesterday, the world found out Toni Morrison passed away. I sat at my desk and wept for hours. The pain of losing someone coursed through my body. I cried because in the words of my friend who shares my love for Morrison, “the world got instantly darker.” The grief is hard to explain, but within hours, I found her works in my house and read them, letting her console me. She explained her legacy so perfectly,

“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

Grief has a way of making you remember, and as I allowed myself to grieve for Toni Morrison, I was reintroduced to the gravity of my words. Toni Morrison saw herself so clearly, it makes you want to see yourself with clear eyes. In her death, she reminded me. She called me to action. There is only one thing left to do:

Write.

Rest in Peace Toni Morrison