America Decides

The South Bank has been running a series of talks with American writers for the last few months, making explicit the importance of the current moment in American history for all of us. I saw Paul Auster, as I mentioned here, and then last week I saw Toni Morrison. As far as I’m concerned Morrison is a genius. She was the first black woman to win a Nobel Prize for Literature, one of only 11 women out of the 105 awards since 1901 (our own Doris Lessing was the 11th woman to win it last year) and her work, though challenging, seems to reach beyond the media literati and academics.

The event was a stark contrast to most author readings. Sitting next to me in Queen Elizabeth Hall was a young woman who lived in London and yet had had to print AA directions to find the South Bank, explaining her journey from Turnpike Lane in great detail to her friends. She was, like many of those present, much younger than the usual literary fan. What’s more, for once the audience was not overwhelmingly white, and those who asked questions were not mostly men. Morrison received standing ovations on her way in, way out, on her way to, and from, the podium. The atmosphere was unlike any other reading I’ve been to, one of whoops and cheering, rather than whispers and clapping. This mostly female, black audience that, even forty years ago, would have been invisible, considers Morrison a god.

Which is probably how another prominent black American is feeling today: god-like, powerful, as if history is about to change forever. Morrison challenged the literary landscape, by writing about experiences that were once not worthy of comment and Barack Obama has done the same, for politics. Whatever the result, he has changed what seems possible in a country that, when he was born, outlawed his parents’ mixed marriage.

In January Morrison switched from supporting her old friend Hillary Clinton, to endorsing Obama, a switch that could be seen both as a desertion of her feminist principles as well as that of an old friend. Was she abandoning her audience and everything she had ever believed? Had race trumped gender in her priorities? Her letter of endorsement suggests that neither race nor gender were at stake for her; her change of heart was determined by who, not what, he was:

‘you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don’t see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom.’

As I write it is predicted that about 50% of the North American population agree with her. But when asked last week if she felt confident about the results, Morrison was candid. She had, she said, seen ‘too many elections stolen’ to take anything for granted. She didn’t know what she’d be doing tonight, bar ‘hiding under the bed’… I, for one, am hoping that she doesn’t have to.