Dear Ms. Morrison,
You are probably wondering why we are writing to you again as if we are a bunch of crazy people who talk to the dead. Perhaps we are a little crazy, but that is not why we are writing. The truth is that we have yet to adjust to your flight from this world. We are still processing our loss and feeling your presence as the news settles in. Remember that moment when Sula and Nel are staring at the water that closed over Chicken Little’s body, even though they can still hear his laughter? We are living in that moment, still hearing you, and yet knowing that you have slipped beyond our reach.
We were scattered in Alabama, Missouri, New Hampshire, and New Jersey when you brought us together one last time across time zones and miles. One of us sent a group text. It was the kind of message that should not just appear on a grubby glass screen between mundane reminders and Facebook notifications. And yet it had to be said this way because to share it with one person at a time would feel too much like a betrayal: Toni Morrison died last night.
Remember when you wrote to the people who died on September 11? The thing that led you to talk to the dead, that feeling of loss for those you did not know but whose deaths you felt deeply nonetheless—that is the thing we feel now. How strange it is to mourn someone who changed you and yet who you never really knew. Our loss feels like trespassing, our love like a transgression. And yet we mourn anyway because to lose someone we did not know personally is still a loss.
A few months ago, you requested to see the manuscript for this book. Since then we have walked around giddy at the idea that you might read our words. We tried to picture you smiling, nodding, perhaps even chuckling. But in our anxious moments (and there were a lot of them) we imagined you raising an elegant eyebrow and flinging the pages out the window of your Tribeca loft. We tried to be satisfied with the idea that even your rejection would have meant being seen by you and that would be enough. But the truth is that we longed for your approval, and like a forgotten lover, we waited for some sign that you might love us back—even just a little.
Now, with the news of your death, our desire seems childish and self-indulgent. You have already given us so many gifts; yet greedily we wanted this one more thing—a nod of approval, some sign that we had done the right thing, told the right stories, written the right book. Oddly, now that you are gone, we can hear you over the din of our anxiety, reminding us that this is our book, not yours; our lives, not yours. We would have to own both, with or without your approval.
So often, your love came in the form of teaching others to love and own themselves. That sentiment sparked this book that focuses on the tender secrets, the places where only our own words could save us from the suffocating power of shame. It’s in that spirit that we wonder aloud now if we who never really knew you have any right to say that we loved you. We did say it when you were living. After all, “I love Toni Morrison” is the mantra of every English major and all your fans. But that phrase is more like saying, I love ice cream or the beach. It means loving a thing, a work of art, an experience, not a person. We know that you were more than the frayed pages of the books we loved. You were human and whole with foibles, memories, joys, and regrets that we did not know. All we had of you were the places in ourselves where your words lived, the times when your wisdom called to us, making our experiences into language and thus making us real to ourselves and the world. Surely that was reason enough to love you. We hope so because we still believe in the truth of your words: “Something that is loved is never lost.”
With peace and love,
The Toni Morrison Book Club
August 2019