Some wonderful Toni Morrison quotes about writing and the white gaze:
I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. … It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That’s what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say “people”, that’s what I mean.
No African American writer had ever done what I did – none of the writers I knew, even the ones I admired – which was to write without the white gaze. My writing wasn’t about them…. This was brand-new space, and once I got there, it was like the whole world opened up, and I was never going to give that up… You know that feeling – that if you don’t write it, it will never be written? You think, Eudora Welty can’t do it, only you.
It was amazing how freed up the canvas became once I took white people out as predominant figures. The only people who did that were black women: black men write about white men because they’re their nemesis.
I have had reviews in the past that have accused me of not writing about white people. I remember a review of “Sula” in which the reviewer said this is all well and good but one day she, meaning me, will have to face up to the real responsibility and get mature and write about the real confrontation for black people which is white people. As though our lives have no meaning and no depth without the white gaze. And I have spent my entire writing life trying to make sure that the white gaze was not the dominant one in any of my books.
The people who helped me most arrive at that kind of language were African writers – Chinua Achebe, Bessie Head. Those writers who could assume the centrality of their race because they were African. And they didn’t explain anything to white people… when I read the poetry of Cesaire or the poetry of Senghor, the novels particularly – “Things Fall Apart” was more important to me than anything only because there was a language, there was a posture, there were the parameters. I could step in now and I didn’t have to be consumed by or concerned by the white gaze….
It has nothing to do with who reads the book – everyone I hope, of any race, any gender, any country.
The problem of being free to write the way you wish to without this other racialized gaze is a serious one for an African American writer.
– Abagond, 2011.
Sources:
- Charlie Rose: An hour with Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison (1998)
- Oprah.com: The Truest Eye (2003)
- Rachel Lister: “Reading Toni Morrison” (2009)
- Thomas LeClair: “‘The Language Must Not Sweat’: A Conversation with Toni Morrison.” The New Republic, 21 Mar. 1981
See also:
This was so powerful when I read it for the first time, back in the day, and it remains powerful. Toni Morrison is of course a great writer. Her writing is important for many reasons, among them being her sentient perspective as articulated above, but also for its craft, its honesty and presence.
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I think white people feel too that their canvas is free when they don’t have to have any black people involved.
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source?
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I listed the sources at the bottom of the post
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I think white people feel too that their canvas is free when they don’t have to have any black people involved.
Which would be most of the time for a sizable percentage.
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@abagond,
Ah, okay, great work compiling them into a relatively seamless post!
Btw, she talks at length about all of this in a great essay called “Home,” in this book–
http://books.google.com/books?id=tiFVHZy0vUsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=house+that+race+built&hl=en&ei=dM7iTsv_AuHa0QHW3-m-BQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=house%20that%20race%20built&f=false
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“good post, yes writing without the white gaze can be difficult when ur raised in america”
You can type that again.
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abagond are you white or black?
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good post
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Writing without the white gaze is extremely difficult. Only now do I think it’s finally possible for me to do so! I’ve had to re-tool much of my writings – and I’m pleased with the results. My writer’s block is gone! 😎
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While Lanston Hughes felt it was impossible for black writers to write without the white gaze, modern day poet Carl Phillips feels that it is possible for black writers to write without any acknowledgment of the white/black dichotomy. They are both right and wrong in my opinion. The African American writer can and should be free to write without limitations. Though it seems impossible to tell a story from a black American’s point of view without mentioning racial discrimination to a degree, I do feel that one can become consumed with racism to the point of psychological imprisonment, thus stifling one’s creativity.
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I agree with Toni Morrison. She said something similar when she said, you know when white authors are writing about black people because they describe the characters as “black.”
I write, too, and I write about black characters, but I never mention their race, because I find it stupid that you have to point out your character is black. You should know the characters are black because I am black. Even so, the stories are not meant to be stories about race, but stories about people, and therefore it shouldn’t matter that they’re decribed as black.
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Mel, I disagree with you. There is no reason to assume that a writer would give his character the same racial or sexual designation as he or she has, though it is often convenient of course.
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Toni Morrison is one of my favourite authors. Probably my favourite living author, along with Ian McEwan.
Honestly, I’m glad she never focuses on white gaze in her books. We’ve had way too many both honest and dishonest books about racism that put white people in the center (as both positive and negative characters).
But I don’t think you have to share the author’s background or race to like their work or to see their books speaking to you. Toni Morrison’s books speak to me the way some books written by authors from my culture never do. For example, Ivo Andric. The guy can write, I get that. I also understand why the themes he explored are important for the Balkans. But his novels don’t speak to me and don’t engage me the way Toni Morrison’s books do.
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How i adore Toni Morisson..I wish to go into filmmaking….I feel I will have to face problems such as this…depicting characters away from a white only point of view…and I’m not even white…there need to be more minorities involved in American filmmaking I swear…
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[…] any of us do, we’ll always continue to come under harsh scrutiny; whether it be from underneath the white gaze, Black men, other people of color, or other Black women. Whether we’re docile, educated, upwardly […]
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In my opinion where black creativity is concerned some whites will always be obsessing or be in a state of confusion or derision where black creativity is concerned.
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[…] Toni Morrison on the white gaze […]
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I think it is interesting to write about other races because it is one way of talking about the exotic, something that is otherwise difficult to find.
Morrison does a good job of turning the tables on those who want to pigeonhole her.
She insists that the HUMAN story is just as much in her books as in any other book.
I like how she said in this interview that if she TRIED to write a universal story, it would be like water. By concentrating one the people, the black people, that she knows, she is able to achieve so much more.
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[…] Maori and New Zealand history, and in many ways functions like a historical novel. American writer Toni Morrison once said in response to a critical feedback that she only wrote about Black […]
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Reblogged this on Project ENGAGE.
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