Princeton University plans Toni Morrison tribute in 2023
New Jersey, The Gulf Observer: A monthslong Toni Morrison tribute at Princeton University, where the Nobel laureate taught for 17 years, will range from music created and performed by Grammy-winning vocalist Cécile McLorin Salvant to a spring lecture series and three-day symposium featuring author Edwidge Danticat, among others.
The tribute will center on “Toni Morrison: Sites of Memory,” an exhibition drawn from her archives that will explore her creative process through manuscripts, correspondence between herself and other Black women, photographs, maps she drew while working on her acclaimed novel “Beloved,” rare drafts of her novel “Song of Solomon” and various unfinished projects.
Morrison had begun writing fiction as part of an informal group of poets and writers at Howard University who met to discuss their work. She attended one meeting with a short story about a Black girl who longed to have blue eyes. Morrison later developed the story as her first novel, The Bluest Eye, getting up every morning at 4 am to write, while raising two children on her own.
The exhibit runs at the Princeton University Library from Feb. 22 to June 4, AP reports.
“In imagining this initiative from exhibition to symposium to partner projects I wanted to show the importance of the archive to understanding Morrison’s work and practice. But I also wanted to show how this archive in particular is a site that opens up new lines of inquiry and inspires new kinds of collaboration,” said curator Autumn Womack, assistant professor of English and African American Studies at Princeton, in a statement released Wednesday.
Morrison, who died in 2019 at age 88, was also known for such novels as “Sula,” “The Bluest Eye” and “Jazz.” She won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993.
