“Feel Something Visceral”: Toni Morrison and the Emotional Editing of Angela Davis’s Autobiography

When editing Angela Davis’s autobiography, Toni Morrison aimed to reconcile the publishers’ demands for a book that sold with the author–protagonist’s concern to produce a politically effective text. Using a method of literary archaeology to compare various manuscript drafts, this article examines the substance of and motivations for Morrison’s recommended changes to the text. Central to Morrison’s approach was a process of emotional editing, defined as the act of making changes to a text both to convey emotions and to elicit them in readers. Through her editorial interventions, Morrison aimed to help readers to understand Davis’s communist affiliations, share in her anger toward law enforcement, and believe in their own capacity to organize for change.