Coda

Abstract

Toni Morrison identifies herself consistently and emphatically as an African American woman writer. She prides herself on being a part of this forceful, intelligent, adaptive population, and she frequently writes praise songs to her people. For example,

what Black people did in this country was brand new … These people were very inventive, very creative, and that was a very modern situation. It was, philosophically, probably the earliest nineteenth-century modernist existence. And out of thrown things they invented everything: a music that is the world’s music, a style, a manner of speaking, a relationship with each other, and more importantly, psychological ways to deal with it. And no one gives us credit for the intelligence it takes to be forced into another culture, be oppressed, and make a third thing. Other cultures who get moved like that die or integrate; or because they’re White, they don’t even integrate, they disappear into the dominant culture. That never happened to us … this is a whole new experience — and it is a modern experience. (Con II, 193)