In this excerpt from Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, Toni Morrison recalls the time a Black childhood friend, who was 11 at the time, told her that she had been praying for blue eyes for two years. “This kind of racism hurts. This is not lynchings and murders and drownings. This is interior pain.” A film by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.
Features
Full Episode | Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am
15 Toni Morrison Quotes About Race, Writing and Love
Clip | Toni Morrison On Writing Without the “White Gaze”
Clip | When Toni Morrison Won The Nobel Prize
Clip | Why Fran Lebowitz Always Sought Advice From Toni Morrison
Clip | Director’s Statement | “Hers was a monumental life that had impacted the world’s culture.”
Toni Morrison biographical timeline
TRANSCRIPT
- I remember a incident from my own childhood when a very close friend of mine and I, we were walking down the street.
We were discussing whether God existed.
And she said he did not.
And I said he did.
But then she said she had proof.
She said, 'I have been praying for two years for blue eyes 'and he never gave me any.'
(gentle music) So I just remember turning around and looking at her.
She was very, very Black and she was very, very, very, very beautiful.
How painful.
Can you imagine that kind of pain?
About that, about color.
So I wanted to say, you know, this kind of racism hurts.
This is not lynchings and murders and drownings.
This is interior pain.
So deep for an 11-year-old girl to believe that if she only had some characteristic of the white world, she would be okay.