Toni Morrison
Alton B. Pollard III joins Karen Wright Marsh to explore the religious and spiritual imagination of Toni Morrison.
You won’t find her name at the top of the roster of Christian saints. She’s not often thought of as a religious writer. But Toni Morrison (1931-2019) the esteemed Nobel and Pulitzer winning novelist, editor and professor, converted to the Catholic church at age 12. What do we know about her faith?
Reverend Dr. Alton B Pollard III is a national author, speaker, ordained minister and the president of Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. As a scholar of African American and U.S. religion and culture, he has written on mysticism and social change, the social witness of Howard Thurman, and a new edition of WEB DuBois’s The Negro Church. Pollard was previously dean of the School of Divinity and professor of Religion and Culture at Howard University in Washington, D.C.
For more about Toni Morrison, Karen recommends:
“On the Paradoxes of Toni Morrison’s Catholicism: Nick Ripatrazone Considers the Faith of an American Icon” by Nick Ripatrazone in LitHub
https://lithub.com/on-the-paradoxes-of-toni-morrisons-catholicism/
“The Religious Dimensions of Toni Morrison’s Literature” by Meagen Jordan in Sojourners
https://sojo.net/articles/religious-dimensions-toni-morrisons-literature
“'I Regret Everything': Toni Morrison Looks Back On Her Personal Life,” a 37 minute interview on NPR
The Life of Toni Morrison, a documentary (2015)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OURXCUdeOA&has_verified=1
The website of the Toni Morrison Society, for a bibliography, timeline and resources.
https://www.tonimorrisonsociety.org/
Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize speech
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture/
From Alton B. Pollard III:
Mysticism and Social Change: The Social Witness of Howard Thurman
A new edition of W.E.B. DuBois’s The Negro Church: With an Introduction by Alton B. Pollard III
Video of “Life in the Valley of the Shadow of Death,” his Howard Thurman Lecture at Emory University https://vimeo.com/144547507
“From civil rights to hip hop” in Faith and Leadership, faithandleadership.com/alton-b-pollard-iii-civil-rights-hip-hop
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