Toni Morrison: I Don’t Have To Apologize
In this interview to promote her new novel, “God Help The Child,” Toni Morrison explains why she welcomes the label “black writer”: ‘“I’m writing for black people,†she says, “in the same way that Tolstoy was not writing for me, a 14-year-old colored girl from Lorain, Ohio. I don’t have to apologize or consider myself limited because I don’t [write about white people] – which is not absolutely true, there are lots of white people in my books. The point is not having the white critic sit on your shoulder and approve it†– she refers to the writer James Baldwin talking about “a little white man deep inside of all of usâ€. Did she exorcise hers? “Well, I never really had it.‒
