Friday Selected Shorts - Celebrate Toni Morrison

Got the brain in gear on Saturday night and bought a ticket to a virtual DMA Arts and Letters Live program.  Selected Shorts: A Celebration of Toni Morrison was a lovely event with some excellent readings and engaging excerpts.

The host Yaa Gyasi has won many awards and her latest book is Transcendent Kingdom.  

From Broadway and television - Anika Noni Rose read an excerpt from Jazz. Lovely read and she has such soulful eyes. 

Another theater and TV award winner - Brandon J. Dirden read from Sula -  quite touching and descriptive 

My favorite  of the evening was a stand alone piece called The Dancing Mind. Joe Morton (he was Rowan- Olivia Pope's Dad on Scandal) has a voice that could just read the phone book to me.  This Emmy award winner, Tony nominated actor is powerful. 

The finale was an except from Sweetness done by Charlayne Woodard - two time Obie winner and more. 

 Toni Morrison (1931-2019) was a Pulitzer Prize winning author (Beloved), and powerful writer through the years. Name any top writing honor and she earned it, including the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. Class act, commanding speaker, and activist. Her writing has made us all think through the years, as she strove to bring the black experience to the written page. 

I thank the DMA for this hour long program. It was well executed. Yes, it's more fun live with audience reaction, but virtual is better than nothing and worth the $20 ticket. 

Toni Morrison

Some authors just command respect. Toni Morrison who passed away this week at age 88 is/was one of those authors. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for Beloved. Her writing and presence was strong, commanding, classy, and unique. She offered a challenge to life, conscience, and history.

Here are a few quotes from Toni Morrison. She is a writer who will remain a current and constant in American literature. A formidable body of work.

Narrative has never been merely entertainment for me. It is, I believe, one of the principal ways in which we absorb knowledge.    Her Nobel lecture.

I decided that winning the Nobel was fabulous. Nobody was going to take that and make it into something else. I felt representational. I felt American. I felt Ohioan. I felt blacker than ever. I felt more woman than ever. I felt all of that, and put all of that together and went out and had a good time. 

1993  It is not possible for me to be unaware of the incredible violence, the willful ignorance, the hunger for other people's pain. 

2012  When I'm not thinking about a novel, or not actually writing it, it's not very good; the 21st century is not a very nice place. I need writing to just stay steady, emotionally. 

Her books and work live on , they breathe and keep us aware of history, life, and the human challenge.