Toni at Random— Dana A. Williams

1. “We’re All We Got”

Everything about Toni Morrison’s distinguished editorship pointed to her understanding of that one truth— that any attempt to revolutionize the publishing industry to be more inclusive of Black authors and Black stories would require an army of people united by a belief in literary and artistic excellence in Black culture. While once-vibrant sociopolitical ties dissolved into gradual disconnections and the loss of support networks through neglect and design translated into a loss of the kind of collective identity that had formed in the late 1960s, Morrison never lost sight of the belief that Black people could be everything they needed.

There was no denying that the current interest in Black or Afro-American studies was strong and growing. That interest was rooted in and pre-supposed a curiosity about an African heritage. But, by and large, attentiveness to that heritage had been obscured. An anthology of African literature could help correct this. Morrison mapped the need this way:

The fact that African literature has been largely neglected can be accounted for by the fact that the educational and literary community has been very slow to discover that African literature is something more than a collection of primitive folktales.

The purpose of this anthology will be to gather in one volume twentieth century African literature which 1) reveals the talent, points of views interests and culture of contemporary African writers; 2) complements the African history text in preparation by the Social Studies Department; 3) extends the awareness and perception of American students (both Black and white) to African people, their literature, traditions, problems, and culture.

And so the Africans speak. The book’s impulse to get on with the real discovery of some truth by allowing peoples to speak for themselves is emblematic of Morrison’s editorship in many ways. She and the editors made no effort to limit the texts to those written to a white audience or to those that could be easily understood in a Western context. Rather, the tales, fiction, poetry, drama, and non-fiction alike were informed by social, political, and cultural experiences and traditions that challenged the primacy of Western ideals as universal. Ideally, this approach would prompt readers to understand that there were multiple worldviews, that Western ways of thinking and being were one among many.

9. The Extraordinariness of Ordinary Black Womanhood

While Morrison had counted on Chase-Riboud’s personality to help sell the book, Chase-Riboud belatedly declared that she wanted to sell the book exclusively on its merits. She desperately wanted to avoid the fate of the artist who had to “tap dance for prizes and coverage.” When she lamented that “even coveted things like the Yale poetry prize has [sic] no meaning because its value is blurred because of its commercial value,” Morrison shot back:

I don’t understand what you are saying about holding a firm line between the work and the publicity. I hope you are right that people who like the work will “do things” for it without being asked— that would relive us entirely of doing anything at all other than manufacturing it— but it is probably not a good idea for us to take that risk. We have to think of all sorts of anonymous people walking into a book store and wanting to buy the book for some reason— one reason I can give them is that they have heard or read about it. . . . I must also try to get booksellers to put in [sic] on their shelves and they will do that for one of two reasons: Random [House] says so or they too have heard about it. So. What is that but publicity?. . . . This is a commercial house historically unenchanted with 500 slim volumes of profound poetry that languish in stockrooms.

Similarly, when Zia Jaffrey asked Morrison about the intelligence of the criticism of her books, Morrison noted:

Once I was reviewed in the New York Review of Books, with two other black writers. The three of us, who don’t write anything alike, were lumped together by color, and the reviewer ended by deciding which of the three books was the best. And she chose one, which could have been [the best], but the reason it was the best was because it was more like “real” black people.

Here, Morrison was referring to Johnson’s “The Oppressor in the Next Room,” which reviewed Song of Solomon, White Rat, and James Alan McPherson’s Elbow Room, books that had nothing in common except the author’s race. Morrison rightly described that kind of reduction as absurd. That Johnson thought Song of Solomon was the “best” was besides the point.

Johnson’s review revealed two problems. One, that Black books that ventured beyond realism were likely to have their authenticity questioned. And, two, that books by Black authors, no matter how different they are one from another, were negligently pitted against each other, with one of them being designated as “the best.” Since she was aware of this tendency, Morrison tried to avoid releasing more than one book in the same season for fear that critics could put them in competition with each other rather than give them individualized attention.