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• Excerpt from A Mercy
• "Fifteen years after her Nobel, Toni Morrison continues to inspire"
• "When she speaks, America listens"
• Ms. Morrison's bio

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Pulitizer Prize-winning author describes her creative process and what drives her to write. (2:45)
 

Full interview. (22:41)
 

Tavis: Tonight, though, speaking of great shows, I am honored - always honored - I got down on my knees when she walked in the studio - Toni Morrison is here. The iconic author of books like "Beloved" and "Song of Solomon" is also, of course, a passionate advocate for the arts and humanities. She's a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Helsinki Watch Committee on Human Rights.

Her latest book, though, out now, called "A Mercy." What a delight, Toni Morrison, to have you on this set.

Toni Morrison: My pleasure.

Tavis: You don't come to the West Coast often enough.

Morrison: It's good to - I try.

Tavis: What do you have against us?

Morrison: No, I love it out here when I get here. It's just so hard.

Tavis: (Laughs) When you get here.

Morrison: Yeah. They make me take my shoes off at the airport, you know? I can't take it.

Tavis: See, I know how that feels. Every week I have to go through that process, and fly six hours back to (unintelligible). But I'm glad to have you here.

Morrison: Good.

Tavis: Let me start by asking something I know you've been asked before, but not by me, and I want to - before I get into the text, which is a beautiful book - ask about your creative process. Tell me what you will about your creative process where your writing is concerned. What's that entail?

Morrison: Usually it begins with a question I have; some problem I don't quite understand. What was it like then, or how does it feel that every is taken from you? How you get yourself together not when times are good, but when they're not. So I envision certain difficult situations among African Americans, men and women, certain different times.

And then when the question is there, then I find out which time or era most illustrates it, and then who might be the people. Then I have to kind of realize them, invent them, reimagine them, enough so that they will open up, talk to me, and let me hear their voices.

Tavis: Why have - to be frank about it, why have Black folk, why have these African Americans been so central to your themes over the years? It didn't have to be that way. Why?

Morrison: Oh, it had to be that way.

Tavis: It had to be that way for you?

Morrison: For me, yeah. That was the silence - the huge silence, not in the history or among scholars, I don't mean that, but in the fiction. The fiction was confrontational about something else. It was almost as though it was never directed toward us, it was always directed outward - even magnificent books like Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man."

That tells me he's not talking to me, because the man he's talking about is not invisible to me. So it was just a different shift that I was interested in. What would it be like if I wrote in such a way that it was immediately understood and I wouldn't have to editorialize and keep explaining things for the so-called "White gaze?" I wanted that away. And then it could be like other art forms that are ours, like jazz. It's between us. But if you do it well enough, it's not limited. It becomes available, even attractive, even enlightening, to people outside the family, as it were.

Tavis: That means, though, to your latter point, that persons have to universally regard the humanity of Black people, and I'm not sure that's the case.

Morrison: Well, we regarded the humanity of White when we read "War and Peace." We just assumed that that was applicable to us because the writer was human and had some human circumstances. So I thought Dostoyevsky was talking about me, and he had no idea.

So the reverse, I think, has begun to happen now. It's not complete. I still find my books and books by other African Americans reviewed as sociology, not literature, and not art, because somehow, if your canvas is African American, the assumption is that it's a narrow field, and I'm only desperate to say it is just the opposite - it's the widest field.

Tavis: How - my word, not yours - how offensive, if at all, is it, to your point now, to see your work reviewed as sociology and not as literature?

Morrison: Not anymore. It used to be something to put up with, but the scholarship has gotten so good, so complicated, so deep now, that it's - I relish critics. And the language is changing a little bit. I remember being on a campus, being told that my book - this is, I don't know, 20 years ago - that my books were taught in 30 different classes on that campus, and they mentioned them - law, women's studies, something. Not once did they mention the English department, where American literature is taught. It was not taught there. That has changed, and that is progress.

Tavis: Let me ask you, then, to that point, before I go into the text itself, to set your modesty aside for just a second. What does it mean, then, to have decided that for you, Black folk had to be central to your storytelling and to have that storytelling so celebrated? You can't be more celebrated than Toni Morrison is now for her literature.

How do you regard the celebration of your work when you, one could argue, rolled the dice, gambled that embracing these Black people in your stories could be celebrated in that way?

Morrison: I trusted myself. I just trusted myself.

Tavis: (Laughs) Can I high-five you on that? I like that. (Laughter) "I just trusted myself."

Morrison: I was smart. I figured if I wanted to read it - if I wanted to read a story about a little vulnerable Black girl, the most vulnerable in society - racism hurts, and I didn't want her to be some little caricature or some joke. This is serious business. I wanted to read that, and there wasn't a book like that. So I trusted myself to at least try, and then again, and then again. You just try - (laughs) you're looking at me funny, Tavis.

Tavis: No, no, I love this. No, I'm thinking about our dear friend Cornel West, when you're speaking of, say "try," who says to me all time, one of the best pieces of advice he gives me consistently is to try again, fail again, fail better. Try again, fail again, fail better.

Morrison: He's right.

Tavis: So I thought about him when you said that. Let me go straight to the book now. Let me start on the outside before I go to the inside, which is another way of saying there are a number of comparisons, a number of parallels that certain critics have drawn to "Beloved." Fair or unfair? Right or wrong?

Morrison: Easy, I think.

Tavis: Easy way to - yeah. Too easy?

Morrison: A little too easy. For me, it's an entirely different book about entirely different things, but I suppose there are some elements - slavery, women, children - the big blocks that could make the parallel with "Beloved" inevitable. But the architecture is entirely different, the canvas is wholly different. This is a book which eliminates racism from slavery. That's different.

Tavis: Now you've gone inside.

Morrison: (Laughs) I'm sorry.

Tavis: No, no, and I want to follow you in, because that's where I wanted to start our conversation. How does one even imagine, much less put on paper, taking racism out of slavery?

Morrison: Hard, because they're coupled. They're twinned in our history, and I just didn't believe it - it couldn't be. It's like "Othello" is really not about him being Black. That play's about something entirely different. So I was thinking, first of all, I knew that Blacks and Whites worked together on those plantations.

I know that people are not born racist. I know it has to be constructed, it has to be taught, it has to be institutionalized. So what about the world before, when everybody, more or less, most of the population was a slave, whether they were from Russia or Egypt or Athens? I mean, civilizations rest on slave populations, including Africa. So that was not the unique thing in this country. The unique thing was moving from area A in Europe or wherever and becoming White. An Italian is an Italian in Italy, but coming here, he can lose that. His citizenship depends on his being White.

When did that happen? What was it like before? So that's what I was trying to explore in "A Mercy.

Tavis: I could - I want to phrase this the right way - I could read "A Mercy," Toni Morrison, as - pardon the word here - as entertainment. I've got a Toni Morrison book, I'll sit down and say it's a good, fascinating read that I am entertained by and empowered by.

But I can see it first and foremost as entertainment, or I could look at this another way and see this brilliant, gifted Black woman named Toni Morrison trying to change the narrative, change the way we see slavery, change the narrative about slavery.

Morrison: And about the country.

Tavis: That's a tall order, though.

Morrison: Yeah, well.

Tavis: Changing the narrative about an institution like slavery.

Morrison: Yeah, we're going to change that.

Tavis: Yeah.

Morrison: Listen, I like readers who read for the story. I want to entertain; I want it to be satisfying. But then there are more fastidious readers, there are more careful readers, or there are just ordinary readers who read it a second time. But the aim is to do both. If I can be a really good musician, it's going to be fun to listen to me. But if you're serious about music, you're going to find something else, and something else, and something else.

And that's why I wanted to use this kind of guidepost when I wrote. This is about how this place got started. This is before Indians called themselves Indians. This is before - when they were Europeans, they weren't White. They were Portuguese, they were Dutch, they were French, they were - and how the whole thing really served only the power to separate poor, indentured Whites from poor, enslaved Blacks - deliberately, sustained - and we have the consequences of that with us now.

Tavis: To your earlier point, there are some White slaves in this text, "A Mercy." What are you trying to say - what do you want me to take away about these White slaves as a part of this narrative? And it's always tough talking about books, because I don't want to give the story away too much. So I'm just trying - I'm talking around these issues, so forgive me for that.

But what do you want me to take away by your putting at the center of the story these White slaves?

Morrison: Well, on the one hand, they're - you could see indentured servants in peoples' wills, if you look back at the 17th century. Their children inherited their debt. They were as confined as anybody. So separating them from African slaves was just a move to keep them from being together and having an attitude about landowners and gentry. So that was an important thing to say.

Also, I was - underneath that message is a message about what slavery really is. That is to say on the one hand it's your being owned by somebody. On the other hand, some of the characters who are free are the most mentally and spiritually enslaved in this book. There's one free Black African who is a craftsman who says to this little slave girl, who adores him.

She says, "You own me," and she loves him so much. And he says, "Own yourself, woman." So there's a psychological slavery as well as the legal slavery."

Tavis: When I read that, there were two things that came to mind; one a statement, the other a question. I thought about, speaking of slavery, Harriet Tubman, who, as you know, said that for all the slaves that she did free, almost 19 trips, she could have freed a whole lot more Negroes if they had known they were enslaved. (Laughter)

"If they had known they were enslaved, I could have freed a lot more of them." I thought about that when I saw that in the text, that was a thought that I had. And then the question I had, what does it mean for - again, back to our friend Cornel West, we talk about this all the time, what it means to be a free Black man. What it means to be a free Black woman.

What does that mean for you? What does it mean to be, since you raised it a moment ago, a free Black man, a free Black woman?

Morrison: Well, the first thing is not license. And people confuse freedom and license. It's an enormous responsibility, but it is one that you love. It's a responsibility you want to have. Think about what you could get Black mothers to do - anything - if you just let them keep their children.

And the separation of children from their mothers is - being beat up is nothing compared to not knowing what that is. They were not even responsible for their children. They had nothing to say about it. Now, if you're free, you have enormous responsibilities, but the point is you can choose those responsibilities.

Tavis: Speaking of mothers and children, tell me - again, I don't want to give away too much of the text - but tell me about Florence, the character in the book.

Morrison: Yeah. Lovely girl who believes she was thrown away by her mother, abandoned, and therefore is needy; she needs compliments. Any time you pat her on the head, she's delighted. She has that yearning, that hunger to erase what she believes was her circumstances when her mother gave her away.

So when she falls in love, of course it's overwhelming, and she's the one who drives this book, who changes from the girl I just described - needy, desperate, happy in slavery, so long as she can have him, who is not a slave - and her process through the book is a journey that is evolution.

Tavis: If I were a cynic - I am not - but if I were a cynic, I could argue with you that the timing of this book is really bad, Toni Morrison. That you couldn't have picked a worse time to put this book out, and my argument would be that America, thanks to a young man who you supported, for the first time ever you got involved in politics, you supported Barack Obama.

Morrison: Oh, I did.

Tavis: One could argue that he, his presence in the White House, or soon to be, is moving America past slavery, past the divide, away from that conversation. And here you come again (laughter) with another book that's just ill-timed.

Morrison: No, look, think of it this way. My book is pre- - not pre-slavery, but pre-racism, okay?

Tavis: Is there such a thing?

Morrison: Yeah.

Tavis: There is such a thing as pre-racism?

Morrison: Oh, yeah.

Tavis: When was that?

Morrison: Any time, everywhere. The world was not like that. Most people lived together. You all don't -

Tavis: I'm being cynical now/

Morrison: Muslims, Christians, they all lived together. Racism is valuable to certain people that own the world. And it's valuable to people who don't own anything, because it prevents them from being horrified by who and what they are. So if you're - sorry about that. (Laughter)

Tavis: ...just went a little deep on me [makes sound]. That was deep.

Morrison: Racism would disappear if it weren't useful, and it's useful.

Tavis: Right, I got you.

Morrison: Okay. Now, what was I saying? Oh, so this election, however, is what Harriet and all of us dreamed about, where what was most important was the content of the character and not the color of the skin. Where what was most important was the intelligence or the generosity or the willingness or the capability, the competence - that's what we all wanted.

Stop looking at us and telling us what we cannot do. Stop looking at us and having these judgments already there. So this was sort of bad. Now, those two things go together, pre- - and I hate to use this other horrible word that I don't believe in, but - so I won't use it - after. (Laughter)

Tavis: Yeah, I got you. I know what you're saying.

Morrison: You know what I mean?

Tavis: Yes, I got you.

Morrison: Think about it. Tavis, it's hard to let go of the fight, of the battle. Which doesn't mean there is no fight and there is no battle, but letting something change like that is hard - hard for me.

Tavis: It's hard for you, I can imagine, or actually, put another way, to be honest, but I can't imagine, if it's hard for you, how hard it would have been for your daddy. Tell me about your daddy, because his views - tell me about your father.

Morrison: My father, born in Georgia. My father saw three people lynched before he was 14. Neighbors, men who owned businesses, and their businesses were coveted, so they just killed them. So he left. Comes to (unintelligible), working class, steel mills, shipyards - everybody's there. Polish people, Italian people, Spanish - everybody, because that's where you went in the early '20s before the crash to get these decent jobs.

So he was there and he worked. However, I just found him extraordinary. Nevertheless, he would not let White people in his house.

Tavis: White folk cannot come in your daddy's house.

Morrison: They cannot come in the house. So when they came, little insurance men and things, they had to be sure. My mother, of course, was a human being. (Laughter) She judged people one at a time, and was terrifically loyal. He was just - you know. So I had both sides. I had both sides.

Tavis: I guess the follow-up to that is whether or not we are ready - I'm saying "we," I mean Americans - whether or not we are ready for this moment that we portend or, in fact, are celebrating at this moment. I said this in my - I was doing an interview earlier today and I made the distinction between change and growth. And if you think about it, change is inevitable; growth is optional.

Morrison: That's true. That's interesting, yeah.

Tavis: Yeah, and I was trying to get to whether or not, now that we've embraced the notion of change -

Morrison: Whether we can go.

Tavis: - whether or not we're ready to - exactly, and that's my question to you.

Morrison: I'm not sure that we are. It's just - I'm not sure. But I don't have to be. We know something else in the past was wrong and was not changing. This is an opportunity, and the important thing to know is that a lot of this is our job. This is not all Barack Obama's job.

Tavis: He cannot be abandoned right now.

Morrison: Uh-uh. Not now. We have to do some work. We'll think about it. And same ways, new ways, we have to come along in the 21^st century, invent stuff. You were laughing a moment ago about how I said I had never talked to a Black person and gotten bored. (Laughter) Well, underneath that is just enormous energy and creativity.

That's, I think, perhaps, grown because of the duress. We had to think of something else in order to stay healthy and alive in this world. But whatever it is, we should claim it.

Tavis: Let me offer this as an exit question - I think exit question - whether or not this moment of openness, of embrace of change, of seeing a particular Black man in a different light, is that light going to cast on the rest of us a shadow or a sunbeam?

What I'm getting at is history, the present, it's the first time for the presidency, but history is full of examples of them letting one person in, celebrating one person over here. Elevating one person over here, but it doesn't mean that all the rest of us get a chance to come up. Are we finally turning the corner on that, or is it just about -

Morrison: We have to work. We're going to have to work, and we can't be afraid.

Tavis: Yeah, can't be afraid.

Morrison: No, no. That's the first line.

Tavis: Yeah, absolutely.

Morrison: Don't be afraid. (Laughs)

Tavis: I could do this for hours if they - I'm thinking about Ted Turner, who started CNN, was on this program last night, and he turned to the camera at the end of the show and said, "PBS, ya'll gotta give Tavis a hour. A half-an-hour is just not enough." (Laughter) Well, if I had an hour, I'd spend it talking to Toni Morrison.

As much as I - every time I'm in her presence I am humbled and empowered every time. Her new book is called "A Mercy: A Novel," by the most brilliant of American writers, and we're delighted to have you, as always.

Morrison: Oh, thank you Tavis.

Tavis: Thank you so much.

Morrison: It was really nice.

Tavis: I appreciate it.