There is a small phrase within Toni Morrison's speech "The Dead of September 11," likely easy-almost too easy-to overlook. And yet my eyes snagged on these 5 little words, this infinitesimal fragment which somehow summarizes the entire piece: between your humanity and mine. Is that not the definition of writing, of art itself? Is art not an exchange, a conversation between our distinctive but common humanities? I am not speaking of universalism—a naive (and quite frankly dangerous) idea which I find myself rejecting more and more as I grow older and my creative muscles strengthen—but I am speaking of a certain kind of connection, a shared understanding of terrible loss, of unshakeable joy, of young and eager love. Some might say I am speaking of universalism but I say I am not. The universalism many reference is more akin to a kind of pandering in my eyes, a stripping of self, of culture, of religion, of anything truly unique to the writer in order to appeal to the everyday person. But is the writer herself not an everyday person? Is the writer's grief or joy or desire or anger no longer literary or "artistic" if it is very clearly her own unique relationship to the feeling, naked and unflinching?
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BORN IN BABYLON
Non-FictionMy school of indifference opened and never closed; I remained its only student. BORN IN BABYLON is a collection of short essays, fragments, prose, creative nonfiction, and other miscellany regarding Blackness, womanhood, memory, identity, and Americ...
