Don't Make a Saint Out of Toni Morrison

About this episode

The episode explores the legacy of Toni Morrison and the implications of her sanctification in cultural discourse.

Seven years after Toni Morrison’s death, we’re experiencing what the critic Parul Sehgal describes as a “wave of Morrisonia.” Eleven of her novels are being reissued by her publisher. There’s a new book of criticism about her novels. You can feel the effort to shore up her legacy. It’s an understandable impulse. This is the woman who wrote “Beloved,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that, as Parul writes, “invented a language for unassimilable pain, for the horrors of the Middle Passage, of bondage and its systematized torture and sexual brutality.” The book can feel like a kind of miracle. And Morrison, therefore, like a kind of saint. But sanctification — both Parul and Wesley fear — has its own risks. It puts Morrison up in the sky, where we can’t quite reach her. Too far away to touch. So in this episode of Cannonball, that’s what Parul, Wesley and their editor, Sasha Weiss, set out to do. Touch Morrison’s work — as she wanted us to.

People in this episode

Host: Wesley Morris

Guests: Parul Sehgal, Sasha Weiss

Topics covered

• Toni Morrison
• literary criticism
• legacy
• cultural commentary
• sanctification

Keywords

• Toni Morrison
• Beloved
• literary legacy
• cultural commentary
• sanctification
• Parul Sehgal
• Wesley Morris

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Beloved

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