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.
Watch the full interview below.
Image via Getty
DISCUSSION
My junior year of high-school, in my AP English class we were assigned to select a novel by a Nobel Prize in Literature winning author. I selected The Bluest Eyes by Toni Morrison and it seriously changed my life. I had always been a "reader" but nothing had been as powerful to me as reading Morrison. I read it quickly and then moved on immediately to Song of Solomon, which remains to this day to be my favorite novel by any author. I could read her work over and over again. I have probably read Song of Solomon 10 times and honestly take something new away each time. The first time I read it I was 16 and I am now 33 and at every stage of my life it has meant something different and more meaningful to me.
tl;dr: I am a fan girl. Love her.