N's Reviews > Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship – An NPR Spring Pick Revealing Her Cultural and Literary Influence

"I thought it was important for people to be in the streets. But that couldn't last. You needed a record. It would be my job to publish the voices, the books, the ideas of African Americans. And that would last"- Toni Morrison (Williams 25).

After finishing Ms. Williams' gripping and beautifully rendered accounts of the late great Toni Morrison as an editor for Random House, I thought of my own experiences of why Professor Morrison is the most important writer I have ever read.

I thought of why her work has stayed with me in my reading and teaching life.

it is her work ethic and belief that the written word is critical in maintaining the stories of a community that is by large, still oppressed by a racially fraught America.

However, this reflection is about Williams' accounts of Morrison's working with some of literature and pop culture's most talented figures.

Williams writes, "Morrison saw her job as documenting stories that might go otherwise untold. There would need to be a record" (30). What a record Morrison has left behind!

Williams briefly writes a biographical sketch of the woman who would become one of America's most controversial writers, and for some a national treasure. After dabbling with theater and acting during her undergraduate years at Howard University, and finishing her Masters at Cornell- Toni Morrison set off to edit at Random House in the late 1960's.

Morrison edited such famed authors in the likes of Toni Cade Bambara, Gayl Jones, Lucille Clifton, Boris Bitters, Wesley Brown, Nettie James, and Barbara Chase Riboud.

She worked with iconic figures such as Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali in writing memoirs that have become classics, and staples of African American Literature and Studies.

Prof. Morrison edited the iconic "The Black Book" and "The Cotton Club" which describes black joy after the Black Arts Movement.

What is marvelous to me as as she nurtured the talents of some of these iconic artists, Morrison would go on to write four novels that would become staples of American Literature, period. Her output during the 1970s-early 1980s included "The Bluest Eye", "Sula", "Song of Solomon" and "Tar Baby".

In my own reading life, "Song of Solomon" and "The Bluest Eye" changed my life. Fiercely authentic stories about the hero's journey, and the exploration of internalized racism, I immediately saw kinship to those characters looking for love and searching for themselves. And what language!

The marvelous and meticulous care she took in her craft, I have seen first hand in some of the iconic books she's edited.

Take for example Toni Cade Bambara's opus, "Those Bones Are Not My Child's" based on the Atlanta Serial Murders and the eternal short story collection "Gorilla, My Love”.

They are two polar opposites of each other: without Morrison's guidance, I am sure the language of those works wouldn't have lived as long in my brain in the years after I have read them.

The humor and verve found in a story like "Raymond's Run" and the horror and grim realities of how law enforcement does not care about the abduction and murders towards young black kids of the 1970s are terrifying examples of how Morrison used her editorial skills with precision.

She wanted the language to bleed through the page, and make these books lifelike and vivid. They certainly have been for me.

Angela Y. Davis' memoir is another iconic book I've read edited by Professor Morrison. She is not a saint, but a human being caught up on the threshold of social justice, and a determination for the social justice of black bodies.

Williams writes that Morrison "understood that the role of the editor was not simply to curate content, but to reflect and challenge the world around them...she pushed truths by embracing voices" (Williams 321).

I have managed to read most of Morrison's oeuvre, and I am often at awe in how she wrote, and the care she gave to each book she wrote.

I am glad that Dana A. Williams has managed to write her own account of how Morrison gave authors the same care she gave her own writing.