A Late Introduction

I’m going to admit something here that I’m not completely comfortable admitting out loud, or on Facebook, where most of my friends are: I have only read one book by Toni Morrison, and I did not like it.

I feel an incredible amount of shame about this. I can’t say that I always have, but now that she’s gone, I am especially in my feelings about it. I always thought that I’d have time to catch up. I have had ample opportunity. I have been gifted Toni’s books many times over the years, and at some point, probably when moving to a home with fewer bookcases, I gave copies of these books away. This makes me sad. I wonder what the younger version of me was thinking. It was only a few years ago, so I can assume: Her topics bum me out. Just reading the book flaps, I could see that the words would contain a lot of pain. I don’t like to read a lot of pain. But I also know that’s untrue.

What is hard for me is reading about black pain. I can read sad stories all day. And as sad as they are, the pain feels removed…unlikely. Sure, I know what it’s like to be sad, and I don’t care for it, but something about reading a sad story reminds me of the human experience. But black pain is different for me to read. I find no entertainment in black pain. At all. The last slave movie that I watched was 12 Years A Slave, and I vowed that it would be my last.

As the tributes to Toni pour in written by not only famous writers and celebrities, but by my own friends (who are famous in their own right, if you ask me) I see that I was so wrong. So completely misinformed. Toni’s writing wasn’t about entertainment. It was about commiseration. She wrote for us so we may have our voices heard. She gave sound to our cries. I didn’t hear that when I read Song of Solomon. I read a sad story about some sad people. I wanted to escape and the book pulled me back into real life. The very thing that people love about it is what shooed me away. And I get it now. I’m several years late, but in reading about how much people that I love love her, I’m ready to read her now.

I’m trying not to beat myself up. That’s a habit for me. I’m drawn to do what I always do: feel stupid for not reading her books sooner. I’m wondering “what’s wrong with me”, that I didn’t like her book and foolishly got rid of every other book that I owned by her based on this assumption. But as my therapist reminds me every single time I see her, I need to be patient with myself. Maybe it wasn’t my time to read her books when she was with us. It looks like my place is on the bandwagon. Or I could read her books and they will still be too much for me, so I’ll always be on the outside of this thing other black readers have. I’ll make my peace with that when and if the time comes.

But for now, I hope I can find some used book stores that will help me rebuild my collection and allow me the chance to discover something new.

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