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Shadowing me through life: How Toni Morrison helped me and my sisterhood

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Toni Morrison collage art by @broobs.psd

I have been a quote-hoarder for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I recall using my most expensive pen to write down words that I felt would serve me well in the long-term and, in the short term, feed my mind on hungry days of boredom and exhaustion. My favorite duty as middle school class monitor writing the "Thought for the Day" on the blackboard. Reiterating those pearls of wisdom made me feel wiser, as if I knew what life was all about.

As I've grown older, the author whose words I have most often remembered, that has rescued and offered solace to my friends and me is Toni Morrison. 

I first encountered Toni's writing as a 19-year-old undergrad. I devoured Beloved with fear, love, and horror. It may be the scariest novel I have ever read — books explicitly written in the horror genre are nothing in comparison. Nothing could be more terrifying than a world that forces a mother to murder her child out of the belief that death is a better fate than having to live with the horrors of reality.

Toni introduced me to Black literature and oral traditions of storytelling that, as a brown woman, with which I was more familiar. Her storytelling reminded me of the way my grandmothers and great grandmothers used to tell my cousins and I stories—weaving them together as they narrated, sometimes without a clear beginning, middle, or end. My grandmother believed some stories should not have a definite conclusion. I thought she was the only one who believed this until I rendezvoused with Toni's writing. 

The first boy I dated was white. I never felt I could match his looks, wit, good humor because of my brown skin, black eyes, and black hair. So ordinary. So mundane. So ugly. Of course, this was a feeling I internalized and never communicated to him. Shortly after our relationship ended, I read The Bluest Eye. Explaining romantic love and physical beauty, Morrison wrote that they were "probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion."

For years, I had felt undesirable — a sense of being "un-special" and not good enough" because of the color of my skin. I had gone out of my way to 'beautify' myself, believing that I was neither a thing to desire nor a person with intelligence. Reading The Bluest Eye, while still in the space of figuring out what went awry in my relationship, felt like a therapy session.

My very first job was my very worst one. I was new to the field in which I was working, naive about navigating it, and struggled to carve and own my space in it. My work environment was sexist, and I was body-shamed for the kind of clothing I wore. I was also the only woman on my team. I continued to battle these forces as I didn't want to give up too soon at my first job. Ultimately I had to come to terms with the reality that my workplace was denying me the respect I deserved. 

"You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down," Morrison writes in Song of Solomon.

Her words helped me make the bold decision to resign and build a career shift that is mainly responsible for my current professional contentment. I moved to a space that I discovered would give me happiness: supporting women's rights activism. It has given me a sense of sisterhood I missed so much during my early work days. One of the feminist sisters I met doing this work is on the cusp of becoming a self-published author. Her book, 'Kaluti' (a slang reference to dark-skinned people in South Asian populations) is a children's book about "standing up to your bullies, discovering what makes you 'enough,' and falling in love with the skin you're in." It is inspired by Toni and her words of wisdom.

Toni believed that "if there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, you must be the one to write it." So did my friend.

Not too long ago, I was chatting with another friend who is at a dead-end in her job. She was struggling to keep up with the pressure of the many deadlines that were defining her weeks, and her mental health was suffering. I told her to take things slow.

"How can I take things slow when I am expected to finish this report in less than 24 hours?" she asked. I don't have that kind of luxury. I am a failure." 

I remembered Toni's words: "You make the job; it doesn't make you. You are not the work you do; you are the person you are." And so I told my friend this.

There was a long silence. 

"Damn! How do you always have the right piece of advice at the right time?" she asked.

"I don't. Toni does," I said. 

And she does. Her words are not just' Quotes of The Day' to scribble on a blackboard, but non-judgmental, empathetic life mantras— the kind that grandmas save for their grandchildren. Even though she's gone, I know her words will continue to support me as I encounter the many lessons that life will throw at me and my sisterhood. I feel privileged to have been able to access and consume a genre of writing that elevated and redefined what it means to be Black, beautiful, powerful and real — that redefined race, beauty, power, and humility.



More articles by Category: Arts and culture, Feminism
More articles by Tag: Women of color, Women's leadership, Black, Books, Identity, Racism, Sexism
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Deepa Ranganathan
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