Dear Toni,
I’m trying to gather the pieces of me to make an Assemblage I call life. So I’m coming to you for guidance. To which I know you would probably respond that I’m not helpless (Toni’s 1998 Sarah Lawrence Commencement Address). This I know to be true & while I am not helpless sometimes traversing down this road feels lonely. Wandering down this wild path feels like I must constantly claim both my desires & fear to prohibit others from attempting to strike me down with them any chance they get. This path requires that I constantly wonder in my writings so that I can know more on the other side of it. I know now that the experience of writing with wonder is what lets me know more. Furthermore, once I arrive, from wondering to knowing, I can assert that no one knows me better than myself. It’s written in the ink on the page & flows through my green ink veins. I know I am not helpless but I also know I can’t do this alone.
So I’m standing at the border to talk to you. Time is something I have been thinking about lately. Specifically, the lifetime of an artist. I know you didn’t publish The Bluest Eye until you were 39 & part of me feels freed by that. The other part of me still feels like time is moving rather quickly—almost as if the week ends on the very day it begins. A new month flushes out the stress of the last with a blink. Then it’s a new year with an even faster pace. I’m attempting to gather myself & which also means finding the delight of dancing flames even as the world constantly seems to be burning. It’s not a matter of if but when my intentions materialize. In the meantime, I’m pondering the ways I want to show up in the world. I know you were at Random House editing Angela Davis, Gayl Jones, Toni Cade Bambara, & other fabulous writers’ work. And all while raising two sons at home. You found a way to make the meantime meaningful not just for yourself but for your community as well.
I appreciate how seriously you took your craft. Yet, you also enjoyed & knew how to have a good time! One of my favorite pictures of you were taken in 1974. You are wearing a floor-length spaghetti strap dress with a scoop neckline, one bracket on each wrist, & mid-size hoops. Yes, the fro was froing as usual before we could see the years progress through the length of your locs. Your gaze is upwards & looking slightly beyond your right hand as you dance your worries away.
You always seemed to be so great at looking above & beyond what we assumed to know while being incredibly present in this life. The ability to hold grief & pain with joy & love is a piece I am trying to gather into my Assemblage. But the seams are always raw & frayed with overthinking anxieties. Maybe for me this ability isn’t always looking fabulous on the dancefloor but calling a close friend, going on a walk, or breaking bread with loved ones. Whatever form this takes, & I’m sure it will change at different points in my life, I’m willing to wander to have my version of a disco pic to look back on. Who am I without holding on to crisis? What will emerge within me if I dare to let my attention hold the magic of life too? What happens if the answer to invisible to whom sets me free? You handled the serious questions of freedom, friendship & love in your work by paying great attention to details.
Quite as it’s kept, we were never supposed to rebuttal our invisibility or question the vigilant state of crisis. You always took us seriously & centered us. Thank you for taking Black girls & Black Women seriously in a world that mocks the very expression of our being. I hope you know we always took you seriously too. We still take you seriously.
The first book I ever read by you was actually a collection of essays entitled The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations. I invested in the hardcover with the light pink dust jacket to take with me to Brasil. It was & still is one of those books that you live with. When I wasn’t reading it I was thinking of the next time I could pick it up. I carried it with me to cafes, the beach, & any moment of silence I got I would open it up to continue studying. As each week waltzed by (time seemed to move a lot slower then), the book collected pen marks, tea stains, & small rips—all of the signs of a well-loved & read book.
I took, & still take, you very seriously. This is why I still remember heading to one of my favorite cafes to read, grabbing The Source of Self Regard from the bookcase, & immediately feeling visceral rage upon seeing the word feia (ugly) written on the pink spine. My anger had nothing to do with the fact that my younger host sister felt compelled to write that word in an attempt to hurt me. My anger was at the fact that she had written it on the cover of my Toni Morrison book! It felt disrespectful, like a slap in the face, not to me but to you. Furthermore, it hurt because just as you cared for us & I cared for you. After some interventions from my support team there, my host sister did apologize & proceeded to mess up the book jacket even more by covering the word feia with a filled-in black heart.
I thought about replacing that copy of my book. I tried to imagined a new copy with a clean dust jacket for me to have a new experience with. However, then I would lose all of my original notes & the places that the book had traveled with me. I wonder how you would’ve dealt with this situation. I remember in your documentary The Pieces I Am, you described how you & your sister used to write words on the sidewalk with a pebble. Then one day, you all noticed another word down the street. You only got to write the f & the u before your mother came storming out of the house ordering both of you to grab a bucket of water & a broom to get rid of the word. That was one of your first lessons in the power of words. Would you have washed away the word feia? Would you have gotten a new clean copy of the book? Ultimately, I kept this copy because it has borne witness to a specific site & time in my life. I want the record to reflect that.
The other reason why I kept this marked version of the book may be that my host sister’s actions are what Black people, & myself as a once Black girl now Black Woman, have been doing throughout generations. Black people have taken the ugly language hurled at us & covered it with a black heart of love. The process of creating a cover of love is not only done with the ugly language but with the physical manifestation of those words meant to impart that we are less deserving. These physical manifestations include subpar housing our mothers still gathered wildflowers to make a bouquet for the dining table & lack of access to healthy food options that were remedied by our grandparent’s family farms. Sometimes seeing the marking of feia still hurts, but the cover of love created by my community melts away the crisis.
This is what I meant when I said I can not do this alone! Just by wondering on the pages the last couple of hours I know more than I did when I began with your help Toni! By tracking gathered knowledge & recording silenced voices I free my own voice. We all live under the same sun & it’s under this sun that our embodied knowledge & stories exist. Not only did you take us as a people seriously but you took our ways of knowing seriously. In other words, the vernacular tales, expressions, & omens that animate the epic tales of Black Folks's lives are honored with immense care in your work.
It was never spiteful. The language was always gorgeous & demanded active participation from the moment you opened the book to the first page. You stood where I stand now, at the border, & you claimed it as central allowing the rest of the world to move over to where you were.
Yet, when I read your words I barely see a border. Making a linear border central means there is no border after all. Instead, you created circle & spiral clearings of invitation that we as readers are welcome to choose to enter. As time has continued to rush past me I have found myself in constant search of a clearing to gather, be still, & honor the stories within & around me. Toni, I wonder where all your energy came from. You had the same twenty-four hours in a day & still did all that you did. How to make a life infused with the right to beauty & magic, while acknowledging crisis is the most difficult work I have set out to do. But because I saw you, I know it’s possible.
with a open heart,
Kay Brown
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This is so tender and beautiful 😭