Portside

The specificity of Dana A. Williams’s Toni at Random takes it beyond the bounds of yet another biographical work about a world-renowned writer. This book is not about Toni Morrison, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author, but about Toni Morrison, boundary-pushing senior editor at Random House. Morrison’s editorial career is discussed less often than her authorial accomplishments. However, Williams paints a picture of someone who, not only as a writer but as an editor, is fastidious and determined to shine a light on topics she deems critical to human understanding. Not only that, but Morrison’s editorial practices were clearly executed with the intention of only publishing books that both she and her authors could be proud of for their capacity to educate, and to preserve the Black cultures of the world.  

Williams begins by firmly placing Morrison in the role of editor in our minds, leading with an anecdotal chapter on the final panel discussion of the Second National Conference of Afro-American Writers at Howard University. What comes across clearly, despite simmering tensions hinted at by Williams and her status as the only woman on the panel, is Morrison’s confidence in her own abilities, experience, and point of view. In each excerpt of communication, whether spoken or written, Morrison’s voice rings out as a bold and unfaltering thing. She is depicted as unwavering in her beliefs and forthright in all things—even admissions of wrongdoing. Most of all, she was firm in her conviction that there was power in the Black book-buying public that publishers consistently overlooked. Williams quotes her as imploring the panel’s audience that day to use the power they might not realize they have to support Black literature—that doing so takes commitment. “Go in the bookstore if he doesn’t have it. Ask him why he doesn’t have it. Why doesn’t he have two shelves devoted only to the books that are of interest to you?” People must know and feel that they have the power of influence in order to wield it properly, and Morrison’s editorial career, as portrayed by Williams, seemed, with every decision made along the way, to be a call to action to Black readers, writers, researchers, and to the world that so frequently discounted them.

Morrison’s list of publication credits is impressive as a who’s who of important cultural figures as well as in its range of subjects and genres tackled. She published autobiographical books by political activist Angela Davis, and the boxing champion Muhammad Ali. She published experimental fiction by Gayl Jones, Leon Forrest, and Toni Cade Bambara, not to mention posthumous works by Henry Dumas. She published poetry by sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud, Lucille Clifton, and June Jordan. She also published Black historical compendiums like The Black Book and The Cotton Club, a documentary text about trains and railroads as related to Black history and culture, and a cookbook called Creole Feast, which included recipes and firsthand career accounts from fifteen Louisiana chefs. The breadth of her editorial work is made all the more admirable by Morrison’s consistency as an editor. She is never shown to be more attentive to one text over another; she invested herself fully in the success of every book on her list.

Williams takes care to highlight how important it was to Morrison that her authors trusted her publishing expertise, otherwise the two could not successfully work together. For example, Morrison and George Ainsworth-Land butted heads while working together on Grow or Die: The Unifying Principle of Transformation. Hurt by her evaluation of his prose, as well as impatient for more progress, Land “arrived unannounced in Morrison’s office” one day and “expressed feelings of distrust of her and Random House.” In response, Morrison laid bare in a letter to Land what she saw to be the root of the issue. “None of this has to do with anything other than human frailty and the structures of vanity—mine and yours.” Morrison apparently had no qualms about being emotionally transparent, even if she would sometimes obfuscate business decisions made by those in charge at Random House for the sake of preserving an author’s optimism. 

This speaks to what emerges as Morrison’s chief priority as an editor: her authors’ success with readers. By closely scrutinizing their work, questioning any and everything that could hinder the reader’s understanding (or the author’s) of what the work conveys, ensuring that every element of a book—content, formatting, cover design, font, etc.—is unified, writing fact sheets that were radiant with praise she felt was truly deserved, and promoting her author’s books at the same time as promoting her own, Morrison demonstrated the exact commitment she solicited from Black readers: a commitment to making sure these books had a real opportunity to flourish.

Williams does not deify Morrison, and in fact seems to keep a more or less healthy distance between herself and her subject. Williams does interject opinion by means of her interpretations of events or pieces of correspondence (e.g. “She balanced her remarks with directness and immodestly veiled condescension”). But she never leans too far in one direction, always allowing Morrison’s expressed beliefs and opinions to lead her to a particular understanding. 

Williams does not discuss Morrison’s editorial credits linearly, sometimes jumping forwards or backwards in time. The reasons for this are not altogether clear, aside from wanting to link certain authors to others with regard to their literary genres, concerns, or cultural impact, but even those associations feel somewhat loose. Perhaps it’s that Morrison’s experience with each author feels contained unto itself which makes the leaps in time and theme more noticeable and the logic behind the chosen order of featured works less clear. There is also an expectation that we will see evidence of Morrison transforming in some significant way over the course of her editorial career. Instead, what Williams reveals is how steadfast Morrison was in her philosophies and practices, something that is perhaps more extraordinary than a charted evolution.

Toni at Random is an edifying look at a beloved creator’s work as not only a writer, but a champion of writers. What it reveals is not meant to overturn, but to sharpen the picture of Toni Morrison we carry in our minds. Ultimately, it confirms that she did indeed love what she, in all her words and works, professed to.

Gianni Washington has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from The University of Surrey. Her writing can be found in L'Esprit Literary Review, West Trade Review, on Litromagazine.com, and in the horror anthology Brief Grislys, among other places. Her debut collection of short fiction, Flowers from the Void, is out now with Serpent's Tail (UK) and CLASH Books (US).