The Pieces I Am

Director: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders Talent: Toni Morrison

Released: 6 March

The late Toni Morrison, whose debut novel The Bluest Eye was published 50 years ago, said she wrote it because she wanted to read it. This is what makes her a towering beacon in the world of literature even after the final chapter of her own life has been written.

The Nobel-Prize winning author changed the narrative for African-Americans and their portrayal in literature but also gave voice to women, through their exterior joys and interior pains whilst eliminating “the white gaze”. People found in Morrison “a new language about themselves about the condition they live in and that discovery gives them a sense of transcendence,” says David Carrasco, the Harvard historian.

Director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders first encountered Morrison for a photo shoot back in 1981, the seed of this documentary was sown in 2014. The intimacy between director and subject matter is evident on screen. The Pieces I Am deftly weaves the life story of Morrison with a direct-to-camera interview, a series of edits from other ones and fascinating contributions and insights from academics and friends.

Tracing her story back to her sharecropper grandparents and a moment in which her mother caught her innocently scratching the letters FUC… into the sidewalk with a pebble and being chastised on the spot – “ultimately I knew words had power” – Morrison set in trail a relationship with language which would define not just her life but that of countless others.

There’s an easy, informative, flow to every aspect of The Pieces I Am which makes it a truly, elevated, educational experience.

MMD