Review | Toni Morrison: The Pieces That I Am
Of Toni Morrison’s 11 published novels, I have read only two: Sula and God Help the Child. Even so, Sula remains one of the best novels I have ever read. In merely 192 pages, Morrison managed to forever change the way I viewed the world and my place in it.
The film opens with the assembly of a collage. Pieces of patterned paper and pictures of Morrison at various ages are layered one on top of the other as Morrison reads a popular quote from Beloved. When the final layer is applied, the image revealed is of the collage used for the films cover poster.
Looking straight at the camera, speaking directly to the audience, Morrison begins by telling the story of her grandfather who boasted that he had read the Bible five times, cover to cover. In his lifetime, Morrison recalls, it had been illegal for black people to read or for white people to teach a black person to read.
“And that sense of [reading] being confrontational permeated our household, though I didn’t understand why early on,” Morrison said. “Ultimately, I knew that words have power.”
Many of us today know Toni Morrison as the first black woman to win a Nobel Prize and a widely taught author in both high school and university literature courses. But she is so much more than that.
“Pieces That I Am”, directed by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, explores Morrison’s work, illuminating parts of her personal life and family history along the way through archival photos and video, commentary from colleagues and scholars, news clippings, and previous television interviews.
But what I love about the film, what sent me rushing home to my desk to write, were the intimate, one-on-one style interviews Morrison did for the film. In those interviews, she connects her real-life experiences with the content of her novels.
In one of those sit-downs, Morrison explains that the inspiration for her first novel, The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, came from a conversation she had with a friend as an 11-year-old child. Her friend asserted that God did not exist because for two years she had prayed for blue eyes and he hadn’t given her any. This experience made Morrison wonder: how does a child learn self-loathing?
The documentary also features interviews from colleagues like Robert Gottlieb, scholars like Fara Griffin, and admirer Oprah Winfrey who touch on the early criticisms Morrison faced as well as the barriers and obstacles she overcame. Civil Rights Activist Angela Davis and literary critic Hilton Als talk about what Morrison did for black culture, not only through her own writing and the uniqueness of her voice as a writer but also through her work as an editor at Random House. During her tenure as an editor, Morrison published such authors as Gayl Jones, Toni Cade Bambara, and Davis herself.
I’m that little blue dot next to the yellow caution cone. 😊
Through this film, Greenfield-Sanders is able to create an intimate, powerful, and inspiring portrayal of Toni Morrison as a writer, mother, and editor. He captures that incomparable magic that makes Morrison one of the most renowned black writers of our time. He captures her victories, choosing to spend the last moments of the film on the announcement of Morrison as the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature recipient, but does not shy away from the ever-constant criticisms she faced as a black woman in an industry dominated by white men. The documentary also serves as a record of Morrison’s innumerable contributions to American culture, introduces her to a new generation of readers, and gives older readers a deeper insight into the work they fell in love with. If you haven’t seen it, you should.
“Toni Morrison: Pieces That I Am” is currently showing at River Oaks Theatre in Houston and The Magnolia Theatre in Dallas. The film will also be available for purchase on AmazonPrime on Sep 17, 2019.
