An Interview with Toni Morrison

morrison: That's what this is all about. Black writing has to carry that burden of other people's desires, not artistic desires but social desires; it's always perceived as working out some body's else's agenda. No other literature has that weight. q: Gloria Steinem made it clear that Alice Walker's work was a departure from other black male writers. What do you think of that in terms of the prototype black author Richard Wright? Do you think Richard Wright was carrying the burden of that weight to do more for the reader than writing a novel? tm: He had a very strong program. Powerful as he was?is? as a writer, nobody can surpass him in doing certain kinds of writing. He does action practically better than anybody; also, he is courageous?he was able to look into areas that nobody at that time was willing to look at. But I think he had a legiti mate and necessary historical slash political outlook. And that surfaces in his text and that is a legitimate purpose. The question now as it was then is: how do you make an art form that is both unquestionably beautiful and also political at the same time? [her son enters the room] But nobody can gain say that book. Now, I guess he had terrible pictures of men in them, terrible pictures of women in them. If you are asking the characters to function as role models?if that [laughter] is what literature is for, I suppose a lot of people would find him offen sive. Black women might find him offensive, vis-a-vis the char acter's relationship to the woman that he has to rape, mutilate, murder, etc. [deep breath]. We are accustomed as black women, anyway, to that kind of dismissal, even by black men, unless we were the tragic mulatto. So what is different, I think, is that black women, who seem to be the only people writing who do not regard white men and white women?the white world?as the central stage in the text. White men write about white men, because that's who they are; white women are interested in white men because they are their