Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am (2019)

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Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am was released on June 21, 2019. in the USA. The American film was produced by Kartemquin Films. The movie storyline was directed by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. The movie was displaying the life story of Toni Morrison, the African American storyteller[1].

Plot

Morrison was born into a working-class family and raised in the steel town of Lorain, Ohio. Morrison learned early on that "words have power." She received a B. in English from Howard University and a Master of Arts from Cornell. She began her work as an editor at Random House in the fiction department, where she nurtured the careers of African American writers. Known as a fabulous cook, she shared her famous carrot cake with colleagues in exchange for helping them type her first novel, The Bluest Eye, published when she was 39. She published it with Alfred A. Knopf in collaboration with the editor Robert Gottlieb. Many people provide insights into the impact of their work. Morrison delves into the places where colored lines separate races[2].

Black Empowerment

She empowers and inspires many African American writers to write what they want to express. She dares to portray the African American's life such as slaves, young black girls, and their feelings and inner thoughts[3]. As she wrote in the New York Times article in 1987 (which is shown in the documentary), "my world did not shrink because I was a Black female write. It just got bigger". Morrison has brought a legacy to the empowerment of expressing inequality and discrimination that African Americans have. For example, her book "The Bluest Eye" was inspired by the childhood memory where African American girls wanted to have blue eyes, as the eyes they have were a pain that is caused by generations of racism[4]. She believes that everyone should write what they believe just like she writes about her belief in African Americans quoting to what she says "the history of the place of Black people in this country is so varied, complex and beautiful. And impactful"[5].

Controversy

Morrison is considered as "far too talented" to focus only on "the black side of provincial American life" by The New York Times. This sounds like a critic saying Morrison should not only write books that contain African American's life while what Morrison wants is expressing the beautiful history of the place of Black people. Moreover, in the late 1980s, many intellectuals protested that Morrison has not yet won any white literary awards despite the outstanding works that she has created. Although 'Beloved' won the awards as her work could not be denied, which later on she received the Pulitzer and Novel Prize in literature. Though Morrison knows why African American writers were not renowned as any other writers, she says that the reader is assumed to be a white person. This has to be changed as the freedom to write stories from the perspective they deserve, not the one imposed upon the work by white people[6].

References

  1. The Trials of Muhammad Ali (2013). IMDb. Retrieved January 17 2021
  2. Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. Spirituality & Practice. Retrieved January 17 2021
  3. David Jenkins. 'Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am Little White Lies. Retrieved January 17 2021
  4. Monica Castillo. Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am RogerEbert. Retrieved January 17 2021]
  5. 15 Toni Morrison Quotes About Race, Writing and Love PBS. Retrieved January 17 2021]
  6. 'Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am': A Defiant Tour Of A Beloved Author's Life, Work NPR. Retrieved January 17 2021]