That she was a meticulous researcher is no surprise to those of us who’ve encountered the precision in her work. And an exhibit at Princeton University grants visitors a glimpse into that creative process, the way Morrison rendered the ordinary, the fantastic, the macabre, and the divine in her works of fiction. “If writing is thinking and discovery and selection and order and meaning,” Morrison wrote in her 1986 essay, “The Site of Memory,” “it is also awe and reverence and mystery and magic.” What may feel like magic to the reader is the result of intellectual labor, intuition, and capacious empathy on Morrison’s part. Morrison, who died in 2019, carved out a space for the Black literary tradition by using the lyricism and folk myths found in Black Americans’ oral customs. Further, it demonstrated to me how Morrison built worlds-how she took ideas and turned them into places for audiences to inhabit-allowing readers to connect with the humanity in her characters. The expansiveness of her answers transformed the abstraction of faith into a tangible experience. When asked about the inspiration behind her debut novel, The Bluest Eye, she recalled details about a childhood friend who didn’t believe in God it felt as if we were right there with her in the memory.

What I do remember is how Morrison responded: She told a story with each reply. The conversation was far-reaching, and I can’t recall everything discussed. The last time I saw the late Toni Morrison speak was in 2016 she was on a panel with the poet Sonia Sanchez and the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, and they talked about art and social change.

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