Namwali Serpell kicks off the tour for her new book On Morrison at the First Parish Church in Cambridge, MA, in conversation with poet Tracy K. Smith. Together, they read the opening of The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison’s debut novel, and discuss all that the passage emits and erases. They also explore how the cultural treatment of Morrison as a literary icon or monument has obscured a true appreciation of her literary form, an appreciation that comes from turning to the page.
*
From the podcast:
Namwali Serpell: The technical first page of The Bluest Eye is: “Here’s the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family.” And then it runs those words together, without punctuation, and then without spaces between them until you get this kind of blur. It feels like, as you say, mechanical, like this machine of ideology, of what whiteness and prosperity and American beauty is supposed to be.
And then, “Quiet as it’s kept,” we get the Black voice coming in, talking about what’s actually happening intimately in real homes, not Dick and Jane homes.
