"Toni Morrison's gift is in allegory. Tar Baby is an allegory. In fact all her novels are. But they're hard to talk about in public. That's where you get in trouble because her books and allegory are not always what they seem to be about. I was too occupied with my recent illness to deal with Beloved. But, in general, she's taken a myth, or she takes what seems to be a myth, and turns it into something else. I don't know how to put this-Beloved could be about the story of truth. She's taken a whole lot of things and turned them upside down. Some of them-you recognize the truth in it. I think that Toni's very painful to read. (Why?) Because it's always, or most times, a horrifying allegory; but you recognize that it works. But you don't really want to march through it. Sometimes people have a lot against Toni, but she's got the most believing story of everybody, this rather elegant matron, whose intentions really are serious, and according to some people, lethal…"
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Novelists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesChildren's authorsEditors from the United StatesPlaywrights from the United States
Original Language: English
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1988 interview in Conversations with James Baldwin edited by Louis H. Pratt and Fred L. Standley (1989)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison
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Toni Morrison
Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019), known as Toni Morrison, was an American novelist, essayist, book editor, and college professor, who received a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
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