Toni Morrison was part of an extraordinary generation of African American women writers. But she was the most special. She was the queen. To understand the impact she had on me you have to appreciate that I came of age in an era when there were very few black female role models.
Prominent black women tended to be entertainers: British popular music pianist Winifred Atwell, British jazz singer Cleo Laine, or the host of American jazz singers such as Ella Fitzgerald. So Toni Morrison was a complete revelation. Black male writers were rare enough. But a black female writer was for me a genuine sensation. She and her peer group – Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor and Ntozake Shange – burned into my consciousness. Toni Morrison did so much to shape my understanding of life and politics, and my world as a black woman.
When she became a revered Nobel prize winner people forgot what was remarkable about her and the initial resistance she encountered from the literary establishment. Reviewing one of her early novels, Sula, for the New York Times in 1973, one writer chided Morrison for her continued focus on black life: “in spite of its richness and its thorough originality, one continually feels its narrowness … Toni Morrison is far too talented to remain only a marvellous recorder of the black side of provincial American life.”
In 1988, 48 black writers published an open letter in the Times protesting the fact that Morrison had not won a National Book Award or the Pulitzer prize.
Five months later she did win a Pulitzer. But some people, including some black male writers, were still not persuaded of her merit. Black writer Stanley Crouch said: “I hope this prize inspires her to write better. She has a certain skill, but she has no serious artistic vision or real artistic integrity. Beloved was a fraud. It gave a fake vision of the slave trade, it didn’t deal with the complicity of Africans, and it moved the males into the wings. The Bluest Eye was her best. I thought something was going to happen after that. Nothing did.” But Morrison was undeterred and remained faithful to her art. And as an editor at Random House, she encouraged other black writers. What was initially distinct about her, and completely riveting to me, was that she focused on the black female experience. In 2003 she told the New Yorker: “What was driving me to write was the silence, so many stories untold and unexamined.” Very recently she said: “I have spent my entire life trying to make sure that the white gaze was not the dominant one in any of my books.”
Toni Morrison was not just a great writer. She was an inspiration to black women in any walk of life. She could have been daunted by the opposition that she encountered early in her career. She could have adapted her work to what the white establishment wanted and expected. Instead, she stuck to her values and her vision. She was strong and dignified throughout her career. A great woman and a personal heroine of mine.
• Diane Abbott is the shadow home secretary
