“I regard my responsibilities as a black writer as someone who must bear witness, someone who must record the way it used to be, I want to make sure that a little piece of the world that I knew doesn’t get forgotten.”
Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye was a required text for one of my foundational courses in the Blount Scholars Program at the University of Alabama. Years earlier, in high school, I would take my mothers copy of Beloved and read it in between her putting it down as she tended to other stuff. My mother loved and introduced me to so many black women writers who in turn became my favorites as well. There was something gut wrenching and gazing and reflective and “Toni how do you know my life” about The Bluest Eye that no other book since I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings had gripped me in the manner it did, at that point in my life. I remember having to write a paper about it and we’d have these intense discussions about our required reading. I remember being one of 3 black students in our entire incoming class that year for the program and how I couldn’t wait to talk about this book. I remember how quiet that discussion was and how confused everyone seemed. The same group of young minds who could speak about American politics with ease and even argue about Socrates and Camus were speechless in their search for what Toni Morrison laid out in The Bluest Eye.

How could a book so revolutionary for me, provide me with such insight and clarity, leave my classmates who didn’t look like me unsure of what they read? And then I realized it wasn’t a reflection of Toni and her writing but a reflection of HOW she wrote and for whom she did it. For me it was simple. And that was always her intention.

Many people in my life, when discussing books that changed our lives, have gotten a charge (i.e. demand) from me to read The Bluest Eye. I let someone borrow my copy (with my notes because that’s how deep it was) and never saw it again. When I started the process of writing WOVEN, I read books by my favorite women authors to immerse myself in stories as I laid out how to share my own and Song of Solomon was my pick.

“There is really nothing more to say--except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.”
Toni Morrison- The Bluest Eye

It’s difficult to realize the greats in your heart won’t live forever. Many days in the mirror I see that middle schooler discovering Maya for the first time in her Aunts attic. The high schooler who stumbled upon Sonia and Nikki and discovered her heart for poetry. The college student who fell head over heels in love with Toni discovering her collective voice through theirs and learning to embrace the beauty in her existence as a black woman. The mother who revisited their ideologies on motherhood, reaffirming the strength in my womanhood and the fruit I was created to share. Toni you’ve been threaded into the fabric of my life. Woven into my journey. My heart celebrates even as it struggles.

Toni thank you for your life, your legacy and being a light for Ohio girls like me who fell in love with writing that we can be free to share our stories without shame or concern that it won’t reach who it needs to reach.

What a story you’ve written Toni!

Thank you!

Into the heavens, beautiful ancestor 💕✨

Selah.