A LOVE LETTER TO A LITERARY LIFE
THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR TONI MORRISON IS THE SUBJECT OF A NEW DOCUMENTARY .
“She. Is. Loved.”
So says Oprah Winfrey near the tail end of Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ touching and expansive documentary “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am,” and it neatly sums up the mission statement for this meticulously crafted hagiography, produced for PBS’ American Masters label.
And let’s be out front with the fact that this most assuredly is a hagiography, unreserved and unflinching in praise for its subject.
But then, if ever a life warranted such treatment, surely it’s Morrison — author of such books as “Sula,” “Tar Baby” and “Song of Solomon” — whose proficiency with prose and eloquent command of language illustrated the beautiful specificity of the black American experience and in turn underscored its fundamental universality.
Winfrey has a personal connection to Morrison, of course, having starred in and produced the feature adaptation of the author’s Pulitzer Prizewinning 1987 novel “Beloved.” And Winfrey’s struggle to secure the rights to the 1998 film adaptation of the novel, along with Morrison’s own struggle with whether to allow the adaptation (which famously underperformed despite an extremely impressive pedigree), is just one of the many interesting sidelights on offer here.
Blessed indeed is the artist who gets to see the reach and impact of their work during their lifetime, and the best thing this film has working in its favor is Morrison herself — gregarious and contemplative at age 88 — getting to tell her own tale. As the bestselling author, Princeton professor and Nobel Prize winner holds forth directly to camera against a white backdrop, she effortlessly conveys pride in her working-class upbringing, humility in her staggering achievements and a humorous twinkle when discussing all of it. In fact, she shares an anecdote early on that neatly underscores the trajectory of her life, about being a young girl and scrawling the beginnings of a particular piece of four-letter profanity in the sand before being found and reprimanded by her mother. Although she didn’t know its specific meaning, she learned then the valuable lesson of just how powerful a tool language can be, when even the implied presence of a word can cause panic and anger.
Indeed, this lesson would come to define the entirety of her career. (“She’s the Emancipation Proclamation of the English language!” per Harvard’s David Carrasco.) The film underscores Morrison’s singular determination to elevate African-American narratives as worthy of being told in their own right, separate from the so-called “white gaze” that persistently adjusted perspectives of black stories for the sake of white readers.
As she said in reference to Ralph Ellison’s 1952 essential novel Invisible Man, “Invisible to who? Not to me.”
Even before the publication of her first book, 1970’s “The Bluest Eye,” Morrison leveraged her practiced rhetorical and linguistic prowess in service of editing groundbreaking tomes from prominent civil rights figures like Muhammad Ali and Angela Davis (herself present to offer a testimonial for Morrison). There are also snippets of some early negative reviews her books received, read aloud with what sure sounds like a barely disguised smirk.
While the filmmaker assembled a sterling roster of celebrity fans and literary luminaries — the aforementioned Winfrey, author Walter Mosley, author Fran Lebowitz — to walk us through Morrison’s journey, it’s more than merely reciting her accomplishments in rote form. Rather, they construct a case for why her work transcends the moment and speaks to broader truths. Says Columbia University professor Farah Jasmine, “If there’s life on Mars, they’re reading Toni Morrison to learn what it means to be human.”
Like the best stories, Morrison’s encompasses multitudes, and Greenfield-Sanders has packed these two hours with reams of archival footage and photographs, enough to paint a vivid and revealing portrait of his subject, framing her personal and professional arc against the backdrop of the social and civic change she played such a key role in shaping. While the format as such doesn’t allow for a critical push and pull, that’s not a debit. This is about time well spent on a life well lived. A series of pieces adding up to much more than the whole.