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The Last Interview
Toni Morrison: The Last Interview: and Other Conversations
A wide-ranging collection of talks with the beloved author finds her refreshingly candid about her books and her life, race and misogyny, and more.
In this generous collection of thought-provoking interviews -- including her first and last -- the author Barack Obama called a "national treasure" talks with a wide variety of people, from Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Bill Moyers to obscure bloggers. She details not only her writing life and her influences, but also her other careers as a teacher, and as a publisher, as well as the gripping story of her family.
In this generous collection of thought-provoking interviews -- including her first and last -- the author Barack Obama called a "national treasure" talks with a wide variety of people, from Charlayne Hunter-Gault and Bill Moyers to obscure bloggers. She details not only her writing life and her influences, but also her other careers as a teacher, and as a publisher, as well as the gripping story of her family.
192 pages, Paperback
First published July 7, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
August 26, 2024
Reading this selection of interviews, over the years of Toni Morrison’s life, show her brilliance shining through every answer she provides the respective interviewers.
February 19, 2022
I am a fan of The Last Interview series - in each of the books in this collection, they have assembled a collection of interviews with the subject, always ending with the last interview that the subject gave before they died. In this edition, featuring Toni Morrison, we get an introduction by Nikki Giovanni, both her first and last interviews, and a collection of some of those that occurred in between. I love the way that you feel the voice of the subject when reading the book - you see the questions they are asked - and the twists on the way they are asked, and you get such a clear sense of Morrison as an individual by the way she answers. Her ability to construct a narrative is as evident when she is answering a question as it is when she is crafting her novel. If you want to spend some time in Morrison's head . . . or if you just want to understand more about her perspectives, this is an excellent one to pick up. You can read it all in one sitting if you have the time, or you can dip in and out, an interview at a time, returning for a short conversation with Morrison whenever you feel you need one.
September 16, 2021
One of the greatest writers in literature (not just "Black literature" or "American literature"), Toni Morrison was also a really great interview subject, as it turns out. The interviews collected here reveal Morrison as a deep thinker who was just as likely to break out into laughter as tears over recollections of her life, work, and fellow writers. Like all of the books in this series, this one concludes with Morrison's last interview, and in every piece here she reveals what made her so electric on the page through her candor, wisdom, wit, and general sense of self.
February 27, 2021
I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Toni Morrison's thoughts about her own works, as well as her thoughts on writing, her family and her life in general.
March 5, 2025
“People don't want to get hurt. They don't want to be left. They don't want to be abandoned, you see. It's as though love is always some present you've given somebody else. And it's really a present you're giving yourself.” (37)
October 24, 2022
It was so pleasant to read these interviews of the great Toni Morrison! I didn’t think the last interviewer did a good job, but I think overall, Toni’s wisdom, kindness and brilliance radiates through all these interviews. It’s interesting to see how there are things that are mentioned throughout that never change.
July 1, 2025
After reading SOS, I was super eager to know more about Morrison. I enjoyed reading the interviews and the graceful ways she pushed the interviewer. There was a lot of redundancy across the interviews though and I would have like to hear more discussion of the books.
March 4, 2024
Amazing book!! I need to read more Toni Morrison. I thought it was actually a bit nice when questions were repetitive, it was cool to see how answers changed or stayed the same over the years. It was amazing seeing how Morrison would connect with the interviewer. Her wisdom really shines through!
April 22, 2024
"The title of this book is The Last Interview but there will never be a last interview with Toni. Her books live and talk to us."
August 23, 2025
'Toni Morrison The Last Interview and Other Conversations' is a compendium of eight interviews with Editor, author, Pulitzer Prize winner, and Nobel Laureate, Toni Morrison that span much of her career from 1973- 2018. Here are some of the things I learned:
1973 Lila Freilicher for ‘Publishers Weekly’ - First Interview: ‘Editor’s Personal Commitment Shapes a Scrapbook of Black History’
• The Black Book – memorabilia of Middleton A (Spike) Harris; Morris Levitt; Roger Furman; and Ernest Smith. “If I had to summarize the book’s main point, I’d say it is survival – triumph despite everything… the kind of book I’d be proud to give to my children…”
1986 Donald M. Suggs, ‘River Styx’
“How did you develop your own literary values in the academy and the publishing worlds, both dominated by white standards of excellence?”
• “What I thought was that I would like to write a book that didn’t try to explain everything to white people or take as its point of departure that I was addressing white people, that the audience for it would be somebody like me.”
• “… I thought everybody knew what I meant (about slavery). But they don’t, so I try to say what does it mean to have no self? When the ‘other’ denies it, which is what slavery is, and what do you have to do to reclaim the self… and what it means to have no art that you can claim… I bring in these quotes from everybody in the world, from then to now, in which it’s clear that what they’re saying is that black Americans didn’t have anything.”
• “The divisiveness (between sexism and racism, for example) is unfortunate.. I think that forced to make a choice between my sons and feminists, it will not be the latter. But I don’t know why I have to make a choice, and I refuse to…”
• “The enemy is not men. The enemy is the concept of the patriarchy, the concept of patriarchy as the way to run the world … is the enemy, patriarchy in medicine, patriarchy in schools, or in literature.”
• “I believe that suggesting that a one-person family is crippled in some way is somebody else’s notion. I do know that one person cannot raise a child completely. But it is also true that two persons can’t do it either. You need everybody. You need a whole community to raise a child… You need a tribe.”
• “Writing for the gallery is something that a writer must resist, no matter who he is. You know the writers who are writing for their audience because they write the same book over and over again with the sort of cute things their readership likes. Serious writers write things that compel them, new challenges, new situations, and a new landscape that they have not been in before. … the address of the novel would be interior, that I would write for a reader who wanted what I wanted.”
1987 Charlayne-Hunter Gault, PBS – Capturing a Mother’s Compulsion to Nurture in 'Beloved’
'Beloved' is the story of a runaway slave, Sethe, who tries to kill her children rather than see them return to slavery. She succeeds in killing only one: a daughter named Beloved. The story unfolds around the return of Beloved’s angry ghost. …Sethe needs to make Beloved’s ghost understand why she killed her.
• “I’d read an article in a nineteenth-century newspaper, about a woman whose name was Margaret Garner, who had indeed killed or tried to kill her children. She was a fugitive slave… an extraordinary idea that was worth a novel, which was this compulsion to nurture, this ferocity that a woman has to be responsible for her children…”
• “… those women were not parents… (white) people insisted that they have children, but they could not be mothers because they had nothing to say about the future of those children…”
• Previous accounts of slavery were simplistic… “My disappointment in some of the accounts was based on the fact that it is so large… so intricate, so immense, so long, and so unprecedented… that you can let slavery be the story, the plot… the center of the story becomes the institution and not the people (characters).”
• In real life, Margaret Garner could not be tried for murder, because that would require the law to acknowledge the black victim’s humanity… Instead, she was tried for ‘theft of property’.
• ‘Could I have done to my children what Sethe did to Beloved?’ Toni Morrison said she felt the only person who had the right to ask that question of Sethe was Beloved’s ghost.
1990 Bill Moyers, PBS – ‘On Love and Writing, and Dealing with Race in Literature’
Love is a metaphor; fierce, powerful, distorted. There are dangers of setting oneself up as a martyr – instead of ‘How angry are you?’ ‘How did you survive, and even flourish?’
• Pecola Breedlove in 'The Bluest Eye', rejected by everyone – the feeling of abject worthlessness - surrendering to the ‘Master narrative’ leads to descent into madness
• Ella in 'Beloved', “If anybody was to ask me, I’d say don’t love nuthin’.”
• Aunt Mildred in 'Song of Solomon', “I wish I’d a known more people. I would have loved them all. If I’d a knowed more, I would have loved more.”
• Contrast Sethe’s love for her child, Beloved, with Jim’s love for his family in Huckleberry Finn, and how that epiphany changed Huck Finn –
• Paradox; Huck Finn became a man by virtue of his association with Jim, who was never called, or thought of, as a man.
• ‘Silence of the black man’ – the inability of writers to deal with blacks as people (humans) led to dark forces, etc. … Othering - no name – an object, not a subject
1998 Zia Jeffrey, Salon
• “I don’t write ‘ist’ novels.” (as in feminists or anti-racists)… I’m not entangled in shaping my work according to others' views of how I should have done it, how I succeeded at doing it… Everything I’ve done in the writing world has been to expand access, rather than close it… leaving the endings open for reinterpretation, revisitation, a little ambiguity. I detest and loathe categories… I don’t subscribe to patriarchy, and I don’t think it should be substituted for matriarchy. I think it’s a question of equitable access.”
• “No one blinks that Hemingway has a massive problem with women.”
• “No one says Solzhenitsyn is writing only about Russians, I mean what’s the matter with him? Why doesn’t he write about Vermont?”
• “I’m not casting blame. I’m just trying to look at something without blinking, to see what it was like… and how that had something to do with how we are now. Novels are inquiries for me.”
2004 Camille O. Cosby, - National Visionary Leadership Project
How did Toni Morrison’s black ancestors learn to read? Slaves were not permitted to go to school. White masters did not see it as important for their property to learn to read.
• “If you don’t understand your past, you can’t transcend it, you might repeat it, you don’t understand half your life. Knowledge is what’s important, you know? Not the erasure, but the confrontation of it.”
• “But I remember thinking about 'Beloved', I really don’t want to do this. I wanted to talk about the incident with a historical figure. But I was really upset because I had to talk about slavery in particular.”
• “I found that I could not use blanket hatred. It was just not useful to me, intellectually… and emotionally. I couldn’t even write out of anger… And the effect is that you don’t move. You just sit there and hate white people or hate racism or hate apartheid, and all your energy’s going there.”
• “One of the things I located was this newspaper article about this woman, Margaret Garner, who had killed one child and was trying to kill the others in order that they not be returned to slavery. What was interesting was that I knew there was infanticide on the ships as well as other places. But what was interesting about this piece was that everybody was stunned because she wasn’t crazy. They kept saying, ‘Well, she’s very logical; she’s very calm’… And that attracted me.”
• “… I think we forget something about slavery: there was an enormous amount of sexual license… But you realize if you own a human being, you really 'own' them. You can get them – boys, girls – to do anything you say on pain of death. That’s what it means to 'own' a human being.”
• “How could I move you if I didn’t tell the truth? I don’t have to apologize for our humanity.”
Degrees of Blackness: purity versus tampered with…
• “When did you feel more confident about your color. I’m still not (2004)… I have been running around my whole life saying that I have no White blood… then my son calls and says, What about that man named Morgan? Reverand Morgen. He was a preacher…I don’t know how I missed it because I think I erased it. Racism is terrible, I mean you can’t even work your way through it while you're working your way through it… I realize I had invented this fabricated story about no White blood in my family.”
2012 Christopher Bollen, ‘Toni Morrison’s Haunting Resonance’
Toni Morrison resisted many of the ‘pervasive liberal dogmas’
• The Black movement wanted only positive portrayals of Black people; ‘Black is Beautiful’ versus The Bluest Eye – racism promotes self-loathing
• The Feminist movement downplayed motherhood in favor of freedom to pursue one’s dreams.
Morrison’s book, 'Home' – Korean War veteran Frank Money returns via Seattle to Georgia, where his younger sister Cee is dying at the hands of a white doctor’s experimentation…
• Korean War called a 'police action' - even though 53,000 American soldiers died – the narrative of the country involved ‘hiding something’…
• Racism throughout the country: in Seattle, Boeing would not sell property to people of Hebrew, Asian, or African descent; several Texas counties had been cleansed of black people; in Tuskegee, Alabama, medical experiments with black men and syphilis; in the Georgia of Morrison’s book, 'Home', Frank’s sister was experimented on by white doctor.
• Liberation for Toni Morrison meant:
o her two sons, who did not make insane demands - rather, she needed to be honest, competent, and humorous; and
o her writing - the freedom which comes from not worrying about whether it is published or promoted…
2018 Alain Elkann, ‘The Last Interview’
• It took Toni Morrison 3-6 years to write a book…
• Why do you write? “Because I’m good at it, I know how…”
• Did the Nobel Prize change your life? “No, they gave me some money and I spent it.” It made a lot of people mad (jealousy?)
• Toni Morrison’s children and grandchildren live in different Americas, in part because of Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama.
I recommend 'The Last Interview' to serious and thoughtful authors and readers, regardless of race or gender.
1973 Lila Freilicher for ‘Publishers Weekly’ - First Interview: ‘Editor’s Personal Commitment Shapes a Scrapbook of Black History’
• The Black Book – memorabilia of Middleton A (Spike) Harris; Morris Levitt; Roger Furman; and Ernest Smith. “If I had to summarize the book’s main point, I’d say it is survival – triumph despite everything… the kind of book I’d be proud to give to my children…”
1986 Donald M. Suggs, ‘River Styx’
“How did you develop your own literary values in the academy and the publishing worlds, both dominated by white standards of excellence?”
• “What I thought was that I would like to write a book that didn’t try to explain everything to white people or take as its point of departure that I was addressing white people, that the audience for it would be somebody like me.”
• “… I thought everybody knew what I meant (about slavery). But they don’t, so I try to say what does it mean to have no self? When the ‘other’ denies it, which is what slavery is, and what do you have to do to reclaim the self… and what it means to have no art that you can claim… I bring in these quotes from everybody in the world, from then to now, in which it’s clear that what they’re saying is that black Americans didn’t have anything.”
• “The divisiveness (between sexism and racism, for example) is unfortunate.. I think that forced to make a choice between my sons and feminists, it will not be the latter. But I don’t know why I have to make a choice, and I refuse to…”
• “The enemy is not men. The enemy is the concept of the patriarchy, the concept of patriarchy as the way to run the world … is the enemy, patriarchy in medicine, patriarchy in schools, or in literature.”
• “I believe that suggesting that a one-person family is crippled in some way is somebody else’s notion. I do know that one person cannot raise a child completely. But it is also true that two persons can’t do it either. You need everybody. You need a whole community to raise a child… You need a tribe.”
• “Writing for the gallery is something that a writer must resist, no matter who he is. You know the writers who are writing for their audience because they write the same book over and over again with the sort of cute things their readership likes. Serious writers write things that compel them, new challenges, new situations, and a new landscape that they have not been in before. … the address of the novel would be interior, that I would write for a reader who wanted what I wanted.”
1987 Charlayne-Hunter Gault, PBS – Capturing a Mother’s Compulsion to Nurture in 'Beloved’
'Beloved' is the story of a runaway slave, Sethe, who tries to kill her children rather than see them return to slavery. She succeeds in killing only one: a daughter named Beloved. The story unfolds around the return of Beloved’s angry ghost. …Sethe needs to make Beloved’s ghost understand why she killed her.
• “I’d read an article in a nineteenth-century newspaper, about a woman whose name was Margaret Garner, who had indeed killed or tried to kill her children. She was a fugitive slave… an extraordinary idea that was worth a novel, which was this compulsion to nurture, this ferocity that a woman has to be responsible for her children…”
• “… those women were not parents… (white) people insisted that they have children, but they could not be mothers because they had nothing to say about the future of those children…”
• Previous accounts of slavery were simplistic… “My disappointment in some of the accounts was based on the fact that it is so large… so intricate, so immense, so long, and so unprecedented… that you can let slavery be the story, the plot… the center of the story becomes the institution and not the people (characters).”
• In real life, Margaret Garner could not be tried for murder, because that would require the law to acknowledge the black victim’s humanity… Instead, she was tried for ‘theft of property’.
• ‘Could I have done to my children what Sethe did to Beloved?’ Toni Morrison said she felt the only person who had the right to ask that question of Sethe was Beloved’s ghost.
1990 Bill Moyers, PBS – ‘On Love and Writing, and Dealing with Race in Literature’
Love is a metaphor; fierce, powerful, distorted. There are dangers of setting oneself up as a martyr – instead of ‘How angry are you?’ ‘How did you survive, and even flourish?’
• Pecola Breedlove in 'The Bluest Eye', rejected by everyone – the feeling of abject worthlessness - surrendering to the ‘Master narrative’ leads to descent into madness
• Ella in 'Beloved', “If anybody was to ask me, I’d say don’t love nuthin’.”
• Aunt Mildred in 'Song of Solomon', “I wish I’d a known more people. I would have loved them all. If I’d a knowed more, I would have loved more.”
• Contrast Sethe’s love for her child, Beloved, with Jim’s love for his family in Huckleberry Finn, and how that epiphany changed Huck Finn –
• Paradox; Huck Finn became a man by virtue of his association with Jim, who was never called, or thought of, as a man.
• ‘Silence of the black man’ – the inability of writers to deal with blacks as people (humans) led to dark forces, etc. … Othering - no name – an object, not a subject
1998 Zia Jeffrey, Salon
• “I don’t write ‘ist’ novels.” (as in feminists or anti-racists)… I’m not entangled in shaping my work according to others' views of how I should have done it, how I succeeded at doing it… Everything I’ve done in the writing world has been to expand access, rather than close it… leaving the endings open for reinterpretation, revisitation, a little ambiguity. I detest and loathe categories… I don’t subscribe to patriarchy, and I don’t think it should be substituted for matriarchy. I think it’s a question of equitable access.”
• “No one blinks that Hemingway has a massive problem with women.”
• “No one says Solzhenitsyn is writing only about Russians, I mean what’s the matter with him? Why doesn’t he write about Vermont?”
• “I’m not casting blame. I’m just trying to look at something without blinking, to see what it was like… and how that had something to do with how we are now. Novels are inquiries for me.”
2004 Camille O. Cosby, - National Visionary Leadership Project
How did Toni Morrison’s black ancestors learn to read? Slaves were not permitted to go to school. White masters did not see it as important for their property to learn to read.
• “If you don’t understand your past, you can’t transcend it, you might repeat it, you don’t understand half your life. Knowledge is what’s important, you know? Not the erasure, but the confrontation of it.”
• “But I remember thinking about 'Beloved', I really don’t want to do this. I wanted to talk about the incident with a historical figure. But I was really upset because I had to talk about slavery in particular.”
• “I found that I could not use blanket hatred. It was just not useful to me, intellectually… and emotionally. I couldn’t even write out of anger… And the effect is that you don’t move. You just sit there and hate white people or hate racism or hate apartheid, and all your energy’s going there.”
• “One of the things I located was this newspaper article about this woman, Margaret Garner, who had killed one child and was trying to kill the others in order that they not be returned to slavery. What was interesting was that I knew there was infanticide on the ships as well as other places. But what was interesting about this piece was that everybody was stunned because she wasn’t crazy. They kept saying, ‘Well, she’s very logical; she’s very calm’… And that attracted me.”
• “… I think we forget something about slavery: there was an enormous amount of sexual license… But you realize if you own a human being, you really 'own' them. You can get them – boys, girls – to do anything you say on pain of death. That’s what it means to 'own' a human being.”
• “How could I move you if I didn’t tell the truth? I don’t have to apologize for our humanity.”
Degrees of Blackness: purity versus tampered with…
• “When did you feel more confident about your color. I’m still not (2004)… I have been running around my whole life saying that I have no White blood… then my son calls and says, What about that man named Morgan? Reverand Morgen. He was a preacher…I don’t know how I missed it because I think I erased it. Racism is terrible, I mean you can’t even work your way through it while you're working your way through it… I realize I had invented this fabricated story about no White blood in my family.”
2012 Christopher Bollen, ‘Toni Morrison’s Haunting Resonance’
Toni Morrison resisted many of the ‘pervasive liberal dogmas’
• The Black movement wanted only positive portrayals of Black people; ‘Black is Beautiful’ versus The Bluest Eye – racism promotes self-loathing
• The Feminist movement downplayed motherhood in favor of freedom to pursue one’s dreams.
Morrison’s book, 'Home' – Korean War veteran Frank Money returns via Seattle to Georgia, where his younger sister Cee is dying at the hands of a white doctor’s experimentation…
• Korean War called a 'police action' - even though 53,000 American soldiers died – the narrative of the country involved ‘hiding something’…
• Racism throughout the country: in Seattle, Boeing would not sell property to people of Hebrew, Asian, or African descent; several Texas counties had been cleansed of black people; in Tuskegee, Alabama, medical experiments with black men and syphilis; in the Georgia of Morrison’s book, 'Home', Frank’s sister was experimented on by white doctor.
• Liberation for Toni Morrison meant:
o her two sons, who did not make insane demands - rather, she needed to be honest, competent, and humorous; and
o her writing - the freedom which comes from not worrying about whether it is published or promoted…
2018 Alain Elkann, ‘The Last Interview’
• It took Toni Morrison 3-6 years to write a book…
• Why do you write? “Because I’m good at it, I know how…”
• Did the Nobel Prize change your life? “No, they gave me some money and I spent it.” It made a lot of people mad (jealousy?)
• Toni Morrison’s children and grandchildren live in different Americas, in part because of Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama.
I recommend 'The Last Interview' to serious and thoughtful authors and readers, regardless of race or gender.
October 3, 2024
Another interesting edition of the last interview series. Toni Morrison is a genius
August 3, 2022
First thing is first -- Toni is *THAT* author for me; she's one of my all-time favorites, and I'd read almost anything by her and about her.
Also, I'm a fan of The Last Interview series, of which I've read three others (with James Baldwin, DFW, and Oliver Sacks), and while this one with Toni Morrison didn't resonate as much as the others, I still appreciated the collection.
Now, on to the content itself: these conversations didn't illuminate too many new things for me and that could be because I've already read numerous other interview accounts of Morrison. The questions - even across disparate interviews - were repetitive, and that's on the interviewers. However, this redundancy is an interesting glimpse into what was (and was made to be) the media's focus on her, her works, and her writing overall. Aside from this, I find Toni's writing's strength to be more in her creative and polished/fleshed-out work than in the on-the-spot, free-flow format. As such, books of/about her that comprise more of the latter don't usually end up resonating with me as poignantly as the former.
All said, I'm still immensely grateful for Toni and the legacy of work she's bequeathed us -- such a blessing, a gift that keeps on giving even in her earthly absence.
Also, I'm a fan of The Last Interview series, of which I've read three others (with James Baldwin, DFW, and Oliver Sacks), and while this one with Toni Morrison didn't resonate as much as the others, I still appreciated the collection.
Now, on to the content itself: these conversations didn't illuminate too many new things for me and that could be because I've already read numerous other interview accounts of Morrison. The questions - even across disparate interviews - were repetitive, and that's on the interviewers. However, this redundancy is an interesting glimpse into what was (and was made to be) the media's focus on her, her works, and her writing overall. Aside from this, I find Toni's writing's strength to be more in her creative and polished/fleshed-out work than in the on-the-spot, free-flow format. As such, books of/about her that comprise more of the latter don't usually end up resonating with me as poignantly as the former.
All said, I'm still immensely grateful for Toni and the legacy of work she's bequeathed us -- such a blessing, a gift that keeps on giving even in her earthly absence.
October 6, 2023
This week is banned books week. And I also happened to listen to a Fran Lebowitz’s interview not long ago, where she shared that aside from exhibiting true wisdom, Toni Morrison is an enormous person, and the most forgiving person she’s ever seen, which impelled me to pick up this short interview collection.
I learned more about Toni Morrison through the small book and surprisingly found that during her undergraduate years, she got to know what upper-middle-class black kids were like for the first time. But she was lucky to find her belonging through theatre group soon, where she read and performed plays. Reading about the experience, I regretted not opting for
something similar in my undergrad years.
When asked if criticism of being "narrowly focused" on black life bothered her, she pointed out the subtext of such groundless criticism comes from the belief that "if it's White, it's broader." She also suggested a writer shouldn't erase a culture or ethnic quality; in fact, "the more concentrated it is in terms of its culture, the more revealing you find it, because you make those connections. There are more connections among us than differences, and that is the point."
This extends to her observations on divisiveness in today's public space. I was surprised to find that she didn't consider her writings feminist, while in my opinion, her novels feature empowering female characters. Toni Morrison is against any "-ist" writing, stating her job is to expand articulation rather than close it. She doesn't support patriarchy but doesn't think it should be replaced with matriarchy either; it's about equitable access at the end of the day.
She dislikes either/or situations and believes feminine intelligence brings a perspective where boundaries aren't so defined, allowing for a more fluid and receptive personality. She also notes that the HIERARCHY being established in today’s public discussion is what’s problematic.
Toni Morrison also shared her philosophy on writing and presenting characters, which was very insightful.
I learned more about Toni Morrison through the small book and surprisingly found that during her undergraduate years, she got to know what upper-middle-class black kids were like for the first time. But she was lucky to find her belonging through theatre group soon, where she read and performed plays. Reading about the experience, I regretted not opting for
something similar in my undergrad years.
When asked if criticism of being "narrowly focused" on black life bothered her, she pointed out the subtext of such groundless criticism comes from the belief that "if it's White, it's broader." She also suggested a writer shouldn't erase a culture or ethnic quality; in fact, "the more concentrated it is in terms of its culture, the more revealing you find it, because you make those connections. There are more connections among us than differences, and that is the point."
This extends to her observations on divisiveness in today's public space. I was surprised to find that she didn't consider her writings feminist, while in my opinion, her novels feature empowering female characters. Toni Morrison is against any "-ist" writing, stating her job is to expand articulation rather than close it. She doesn't support patriarchy but doesn't think it should be replaced with matriarchy either; it's about equitable access at the end of the day.
She dislikes either/or situations and believes feminine intelligence brings a perspective where boundaries aren't so defined, allowing for a more fluid and receptive personality. She also notes that the HIERARCHY being established in today’s public discussion is what’s problematic.
Toni Morrison also shared her philosophy on writing and presenting characters, which was very insightful.
September 6, 2022
Nice concise and simple. Ms. Morrison’s words are able to breathe. Given plenty of air. As these interviews are written in a question and answer format. You see the question and the response. So, we get insight into Ms. Morrison’s thinking and her novel crafting process. There is some overlap, because the interviews were done over different times by various interviewers. I don’t view that as a bad thing, in fact it helps to solidify Ms. Morrison’s consistency. She is not saying one thing in say 1978 and something completely different in 1983. Great quick read for fans of Ms. Morrison and that I’m sure includes everyone.
Here is Ms. Morrison responding to the question of how she writes for Black readers unlike some other Black authors. She remained consistent in this stance throughout her career;
“It’s a very nuanced thing. The assumption is in the language. There’s a little extra editorializing where the writer who understands the major readers to be White people has to explain stuff that he wouldn’t have to explain to me because I would know.”
Here is Ms. Morrison responding to the question of how she writes for Black readers unlike some other Black authors. She remained consistent in this stance throughout her career;
“It’s a very nuanced thing. The assumption is in the language. There’s a little extra editorializing where the writer who understands the major readers to be White people has to explain stuff that he wouldn’t have to explain to me because I would know.”
March 19, 2021
When a great artist - person - passes, I am drawn to (re-)listen to, (re-)read their work, perhaps as a way of mourning but also as a way of keeping them in this world.
So I have been drawn to/curious about this series of "Last Interviews", and decided to start with Toni Morrison for "Black History Month".
At first, I was disappointed - and that feeling lingers. The intro by Nikki Giovanni feels self-interested and self-serving. The text of the interviews has not been edited at all - either for grammar or for "readability". We all know our spoken words rarely read well. While I understand the "authenticity" of this approach, it is presented as written, as text being sold. To refuse to edit it seems only cheap on the part of the publisher.
That said, Toni Morrison was such a brilliant, reflective, insightful person, that there are a ton of thought-provoking gems in this, and I was glad to have read it. It might work better thoughy, as an audio book...
So I have been drawn to/curious about this series of "Last Interviews", and decided to start with Toni Morrison for "Black History Month".
At first, I was disappointed - and that feeling lingers. The intro by Nikki Giovanni feels self-interested and self-serving. The text of the interviews has not been edited at all - either for grammar or for "readability". We all know our spoken words rarely read well. While I understand the "authenticity" of this approach, it is presented as written, as text being sold. To refuse to edit it seems only cheap on the part of the publisher.
That said, Toni Morrison was such a brilliant, reflective, insightful person, that there are a ton of thought-provoking gems in this, and I was glad to have read it. It might work better thoughy, as an audio book...
December 5, 2021
Outstanding collection of interviews with the late Nobel laureate presented in simple question-and-answer format which allows the reader to experience Toni Morrison's voice unfiltered--as if she were in the room speaking, without a second party intervening to edit and shape the discourse. Even the most generous and fair-minded journalist/biographer picks and chooses which comments to share, and so in a profile or feature you are usually reading through the lens of the interviewer's perceptions of Toni Morrison. Not so here.
Particularly illuminating and wide-ranging are Bill Moyers' lengthy interview on PBS ("Toni Morrison on Love and Writing, and Dealing with Race in Literature," March 11, 1990); Zia Jaffrey's 1998 interview in Salon; and Christopher Bollen's March 2012 piece for Interview Magazine ("Toni Morrison's Haunting Resonance").
A good choice for every library, and a good gift for any struggling writer (and is there any other kind?) you know.
Particularly illuminating and wide-ranging are Bill Moyers' lengthy interview on PBS ("Toni Morrison on Love and Writing, and Dealing with Race in Literature," March 11, 1990); Zia Jaffrey's 1998 interview in Salon; and Christopher Bollen's March 2012 piece for Interview Magazine ("Toni Morrison's Haunting Resonance").
A good choice for every library, and a good gift for any struggling writer (and is there any other kind?) you know.
December 25, 2023
Toni Morrison is absolutely brilliant. Up until her last breath she gave a critically accurate and often beautifully disgusting portrayal of the underbelly of white america via African American life through the lens of a Black woman. While a couple of these interviews I felt tried to reduce her logic/miss her point entirely, she gracefully retorted while conveying her depth of thought.
I wouldn’t say this is a place to start if you aren’t already thoroughly familiar with her work, but I would say you can start here before jumping to Source of Self Regard after going through her earlier fictions.
All in all, it felt to me like a complete ending of an authors work and journey which, in all my life as an avid reader I don’t think I’ve ever followed an author; besides her, to gain, or a button such as so is not really provided- not sure which. All in all, I am in awe and admiration for all that is Toni Morrison
I wouldn’t say this is a place to start if you aren’t already thoroughly familiar with her work, but I would say you can start here before jumping to Source of Self Regard after going through her earlier fictions.
All in all, it felt to me like a complete ending of an authors work and journey which, in all my life as an avid reader I don’t think I’ve ever followed an author; besides her, to gain, or a button such as so is not really provided- not sure which. All in all, I am in awe and admiration for all that is Toni Morrison
October 25, 2020
Content wise this book is very interesting. Many of the people conducting the interviews have a good understanding of Morrison's work and her point of view, and help to bring out nuances and details. The actual last interview is with an Italian journalist who asks too many obvious questions but does bring out one, for me, true surprise response:
ELKANN: You have a writer that you really admire?
MORRISON: [Erskine] Caldwell was a great favorite of mine for years and years and years. For his brain, for his mind, how he understood things. . . .
Didn't see that one coming.
This book would get five stars from me . . . but it is very poorly edited. More than once I found myself needing to change a word in a sentence to have it make sense. This was usually easy to do, implying, to me, that the book was not proper copy edited.
ELKANN: You have a writer that you really admire?
MORRISON: [Erskine] Caldwell was a great favorite of mine for years and years and years. For his brain, for his mind, how he understood things. . . .
Didn't see that one coming.
This book would get five stars from me . . . but it is very poorly edited. More than once I found myself needing to change a word in a sentence to have it make sense. This was usually easy to do, implying, to me, that the book was not proper copy edited.
March 4, 2021
“Serious writers write things that compel them.” Our past is a living thing...personifying the past is an inescapable confrontation (Beloved). To Sethe “Your love is too thick.” “And they had this sort of intimate relationship with God and death and all sorts of things that strike fear into the modern heart. They had a language for it.” Available to your own imagination. “All books are questions for me. I mean, they start out - I write them because I don’t know something.” Slavery is older than racism? An unhurried and thoughtful speaker. Second wave feminism’s tendency to diminish the significance of motherhood. Toni Morrison, the conscience of America. Arrogant ink. “My best novel is Jazz. But nobody cares about it but me.” Elevates language.
June 13, 2021
The actual last interview in this collection was done when Morrison was 87 by an Italian journalist who doesn't feel as though he really did his research. But here, as elsewhere, the Nobel-winner elevates the conversation because she's an artist who's been contemplating the big questions -- both those that are asked and those that should've been -- for a lifetime. Throughout the conversation, she invites us to read Toni Cade Bambara, Henry Dumas and Leon Forrest, to reframe the way we look at reviews, and to celebrate motherhood as a liberatory role.
October 23, 2021
While I did not find Morrison's actual last interview memorable, the breadth of these interviews are. The included interviews provide an interesting snapshot into her career from The Black Book onward that help orient fans of Morrison into her own goals for her projects, the changes in how she writes, and her relationship with feminism across her life.
Read
March 30, 2021This was a selection for my book club and I'm ashamed to say that while I have several of Toni Morrison's books on my "To Read" list, I haven't actually read any of them. Reading her interviews has definitely renewed my interest and I'll make sure to choose one to read in the next few months.
May 9, 2021
Excellent
A must read for fans of Morrison. A look into the mind behind some of the greatest novels of all time. Even more interesting is the work she does as a writer to develop the interior lives of her characters. Very interesting. A perfect weekend read.
A must read for fans of Morrison. A look into the mind behind some of the greatest novels of all time. Even more interesting is the work she does as a writer to develop the interior lives of her characters. Very interesting. A perfect weekend read.
Read
February 3, 2025Got this from my library to kick BHM off with a favorite of mine I was only introduced to in college - Morrison! It made me so excited to keep reading from her. I am especially excited to pick up Sula.
February 4, 2025
This was a collection of interviews with Toni Morrison starting in 1973 and ending in 2018 when she was 87. I thought it was only fitting that I read these interviews since I have enjoyed seven of her books. It saddens me that there won’t ever be another Toni Morrison book.
November 16, 2020
Toni Morrison has always been a force but it meant so much reading her words in a time like this. The format of the book is a little off and wish it was more uniform. They had the time.
February 19, 2021
Various interviews with Morrison including the last one.
Her words are what carry the book, more that the questions.
I need to get back to reading and perhaps re-reading her works.
Her words are what carry the book, more that the questions.
I need to get back to reading and perhaps re-reading her works.
March 1, 2022
A lot of great (mostly) interviews that characterize Toni Morrison well.
Read
April 15, 2023Obviously loved
October 28, 2024
This book of interviws was gifted to me; it was enlightening.
I'm not sure I've read Toni's novels, but definitely interested in Beloved after reading about her process, life, and world view.
I'm not sure I've read Toni's novels, but definitely interested in Beloved after reading about her process, life, and world view.
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