Toni Morrison Is Amazed at Her Own Talent on The Colbert Report

Toni Morrison stopped by for a chill chat about race, pigeonholing and the time she was taken aback by her own written words on Wednesday night’s edition of The Colbert Report. “Is your entire literary career a midlife crisis?” Stephen Colbert asked.

Colbert starts the interview off applauding Morrison for winning the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize, aka “like the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame of Books.” One highlight of their sit-down is when Morrison recalls reading Beloved a couple weeks ago for the first time in awhile. A fan sent her the book to autograph and she opened it to the beginning and realized, “I’m the shit.”

“It’s really good,” she says. “I looked down and there were these sentences. These incredible, beautiful, lyric, but straight and powerful sentences, so I just kept reading.”

I’m now about to go play “Flawless,” but FYI during the interview, Morrison also mentions a regret she had about The Bluest Eye (my favorite book) and speaks critically about racism, Obamacare and preferring the label of “American” author versus “African-American” author.