Namwali Serpell's 'On Morrison' Delivers a Landmark Critical Appraisal of the Great Novelist's Work
Namwali Serpell leaves no stone unturned in her deep and enriching portrait of the Nobel laureate's oeuvre in the new book On Morrison. This landmark appraisal has been eagerly anticipated for years by serious readers of Toni Morrison's work.
What This Book Is Not: Beyond Biography and Inspiration
Before exploring what this book accomplishes, it's crucial to understand what it deliberately avoids. On Morrison is not a biography of Chloe Anthony Wofford, who would become Toni Morrison. Readers will find little here about her birth and early life in Lorain, Ohio, her education at Howard and Cornell universities, her editorial work at Random House, or her phenomenal success as a novelist.
Nor is this book designed for fans who primarily seek inspirational quotes or political ammunition from Morrison's work. Instead, Serpell offers something more substantial: a rigorous critical appraisal of the literary craft itself.
The Challenge of Reading and Teaching Morrison
Despite Morrison's enormous contribution to American letters, her novels are still too often read primarily for their commentary on Black life rather than their literary technique. Works like Song of Solomon and Jazz appear more frequently on African American studies syllabi than creative writing ones.
In her introduction, Serpell identifies the core reason for this imbalance: "She is difficult to read. She is difficult to teach." As an author of two ambitious novels that straddle genres, generations, and continents, Serpell brings particular insight to what it means to be difficult, and to be called difficult, in literary circles.
A Journey Through Morrison's Narrative Strategies
Across twelve meticulously crafted essays, Serpell does Morrison the profound respect of reading her seriously as a literary artist. She identifies and critiques narrative strategies, puzzles over craft choices, compares formal techniques across novels, and chases edits and revisions through archival research.
The journey begins with Morrison's debut novel, The Bluest Eye. Serpell examines how Morrison broke the narrative into parts filtered through different characters' perspectives to tell the story of Pecola, the little Black girl who wishes for blue eyes. This fragmented approach forces readers to "piece together the myriad overdetermined forces that have obliterated this young girl."
When Pecola suffers horrifying abuse culminating in rape and pregnancy at her father's hands, the narrative structure creates "not passive pity or easy demonising, but active reassembly and self-interrogation." As Morrison herself often stated: "The structure is the argument."
Uncovering Archival Revelations
Serpell's archival research uncovers startling details about Morrison's creative process. In examining Recitatif, Morrison's only published short story, Serpell reveals that it began as a screenplay treatment for actors Marlo Thomas and Cicely Tyson.
The story presents five encounters between two women, Roberta and Twyla, over several decades. Readers learn early that one woman is white and the other Black, but Morrison never reveals which is which, creating a guessing game that demonstrates the arbitrariness of racial categorization.
Serpell traces the transformation from treatment to story, noting that in June 1982, after likely film rejection, Morrison read Nettie Jones's Fish Tales, structured with first-person vignettes that refrain from revealing characters' races. A month later, Morrison submitted "a radical revision" of her story featuring "an experiment in the removal of all racial codes."
Identifying Humor and Hybrid Traditions
Serpell also identifies the often-overlooked humor in Morrison's work, particularly in Song of Solomon. When protagonist Milkman Dead visits his paternal aunt Pilate Dead, she quips: "Ain't but three Deads alive," prompting Milkman's response: "I'm a Dead! My mother's a Dead!"
The novel follows Milkman's Odyssean quest to learn about his great-grandfather, who escaped slavery by "flying" back to Africa. By grounding its narrative in both Greek and African folktales, the novel "syncretizes disparate traditions, both reinforcing the originary hybridity of archetypal tales and making them coincide and conflict in its mid-20th-century milieu."
A Critic's Balanced Perspective
One reason On Morrison proves so rewarding is Serpell's balanced perspective as both admirer and clear-eyed critic. As an African immigrant herself, Serpell demonstrates particular attunement to the centrality of Black experience while remaining sensitive to peripheral characters' estrangement.
She notes Morrison's wide reading of African elders like Camara Laye, Chinua Achebe, and Bessie Head, while acknowledging Morrison's earlier incuriosity about Native American characters—an oversight addressed in later work like A Mercy.
At times, Serpell's tone shifts from the ruthlessly observant "I" of the critic to the "we" of the professor guiding students through thorny texts (she teaches at Harvard). Though she agonizes over critiquing "my elder," she admits Morrison's poetry is "not good" and pours deserved scorn on a messy post-9/11 essay unworthy of Morrison's intellect.
A Multifaceted Achievement
These criticisms only reinforce the integrity of Serpell's analysis. With On Morrison, she has delivered a book that operates successfully on multiple levels: as a study of literary craft, as a critical appraisal, and as tribute to an artist who was difficult in all the right ways.
On Morrison by Namwali Serpell represents a significant contribution to Morrison scholarship, offering readers who can distinguish their Soaphead Church from their Schoolteacher the rigorous appraisal they have long awaited.
