BOOK CLUB: Announcing our May selection
Novelist and Harvard professor Namwali Serpell's "On Morrison" is our latest Ink Book Club pick. Join us for a live discussion with the author on Wednesday, May 6 at 12:30 p.m. Eastern
“Critics generally don’t associate black people with ideas,” observed Toni Morrison in an interview for the 1983 book Black Women Writers at Work, edited by Claudia Tate. That epigraph opens Namwali Serpell’s masterful On Morrison, the Ink Book Club’s May selection.
Serpell, a Guggenheim fellow and professor of English at Harvard, here takes us on a provocative journey through the Nobel winner’s oeuvre, exploring why the late writer remains such a titanic figure—and lightning rod. Serpell writes that “Morrison has shaped the way we think about everything from literature to politics to criticism to ethics to the responsibilities of making art,” which may be why her novels are so often the target of censors. For one, her 1970 debut novel, The Bluest Eye, remains one of the most frequently “challenged” books in the U.S., according to the American Library Association, as does Beloved, for its “brutal depiction of slavery.”
About On Morrison, the New York Times critic Wesley Morris wrote: The author “has hopped on a rocket and touched the Tonisphere with her mind…What Serpell’s written, devised, built is a novel-by-novel treatise on, inspection of, spelunking into, playing with Morrisonian philosophy, aesthetics, craft; and she might be having the time of her life.”
While acknowledging Morrison’s genius, Serpell also writes that “Morrison incensed all kinds of people. How dare she be a difficult writer and a black woman? How dare she refuse to placate or translate? How dare she insist on her own brilliance.” Let’s find out what she means, and why she—like Morrison—does not capitalize “black.”
Join us Wednesday, May 6 at 12:30 p.m. Eastern for this live Ink Book Club discussion with Serpell, who will take us behind the scenes in the decades-long composition of On Morrison. We get the benefit of being one of Serpell’s students without having to pay tuition at Harvard.
Below, you’ll find some discussion and reflection prompts to consider in advance of Wednesday’s conversation. The Ink Book Club’s events are open to all paid subscribers to The Ink. If you haven’t yet become part of our community, join today. And if you’re already a member, consider giving a gift or group subscription.
