Stuart Egan is an NBCT High School Teacher in North Carolina.
In this post, he notes that school boards and vigilantes often challenge Toni Morrison’s novels. Her writings are frequently banned. But he contends that the critics should read them and perhaps they will learn from them as he did.
Toni Morrison passed this past week. She was the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and what she did (and still does) for this white, upper middle class male teacher is something that I will always value as a life-long student: she made me understand that I don’t understand.
And she made me uncomfortable in my own skin to the point it still forces me to take a hard objective look at myself, my actions, and how I treat others. She also makes me look at the past through different lenses, especially my upbringing in a small rural town in Georgia…
Great literature teaches us about ourselves, especially the parts of ourselves that we do not want to acknowledge but that control how we perceive others and how we treat others. And in a nation where many hold the Second Amendment and guns with as much fervor as it does the Bible (which by the way is one of the most challenged books in the country), should we not also look at the First Amendment and its protection of the freedom of speech as dearly?
The very man who is the president of the United States freely exercises his right for freedom of speech through his Twitter account. He exercises that right because he can.
Do I agree with him? Hardly ever. And that’s my right. But having read great works of literature challenges me and forces me to have difficult and uncomfortable, yet peaceful, confrontations with issues and society.
I do not believe that our current president is willing to be challenged and be uncomfortable. I think part of the reason is that he doesn’t read. And what I mean by that is that he does not allow himself to be challenged by the words, the actions, the viewpoints, and the events that have shaped this country. In fact, when he “writes” his books, he has someone do it for him…
Maybe the fact Toni Morrison is one of the most challenged and banned authors is a statement that our society is afraid to look at itself through the eyes of others who have lived lives along different paths. That fear leads to division and that division manifests itself in so many ways, including violence.
This country desperately needs to learn about itself and listen to those whose viewpoints and experiences and words can challenge us to be better than we were yesterday and better than we are today.
This country needs to a country of learners.
And Toni Morrison was and still is a great teacher.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And this is THE reason why every school system should scrap the Common Core ELA standards and go back to reading real books that make us think about who we are as a person. Informational text isn’t doing the job.
Politicians are mostly lawyers. Lawyers are NOT public school teachers and sorry, but so many have NO CLUE. They get an idea in their heads and talk to one another … huh? And when they do ask questions, they ask the WRONG people.
Reblogged this on caffeinated rage and commented:
Thanks to Dr. Ravitch.
America does not like to see itself through the lens of the oppressed. Morrison held that mirror up for us to view without warts and blemishes in full view. Perhaps this is the reason so many of her books have been banned.
I have a second hand knowledge of the late Toni Morrison. She grew up up in Ohio and attended integrated schools. Perhaps this is why she chose to reside in the same integrated community in which I taught. The mother of one of my Haitian students was her housekeeper for many years. From time to time my student would share some Toni Morrison gossip with me. Morrison was concerned about her younger son who was involved with drugs. Her son later passed away from pancreatic cancer.
My student brought once in a signed copy of “Beloved” and told me she wanted to be able to read it on her own. She would stop in to my class before school started and asked me to read some of it aloud to her as time would permit.
Our custodian was the fire chief in the town. He and his volunteers once put out a kitchen fire in Morrison’s home. After the fire was extinguished, she insisted that the fire fighters have some lemonade with her. Toni Morrison kept a low profile in the town, although she was friendly with her neighbors. She never tried to draw attention to herself as she valued her privacy.
The best poet I know writing in America today tells me that she learned to write from Toni Morrison. I believe it. Was there a better writer in our time than Morrison? I don’t think so.
It’s a shame that her death has not been widely acknowledged. Maybe it was of the shootings and the ICE raids taking over the headlines?