Toni Morrison

Something Rhymes with Purple

Sony Music

Comedy, Arts, Education

4.8 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today we are celebrating Women’s History Month and looking at the pioneering writer, Toni Morrison. From her poem, ‘Someone leans near’ to her debut novel, ‘The Bluest Eye’, Susie and Gyles delve into the books, poetry, and legacy of the Nobel Literary Prize winner. We encounter Levi Roots, a trip to Princeton and a recount of the time Gyles met her (of course!) as we look at her life, work, and the impact that she has had on the English language. We love hearing from you, find us @SomethingRhymes on Twitter and Facebook, @SomethingRhymesWith on Instagram or you can email us here: [email protected] Want even more purple, people? Join the Purple Plus Club by clicking the banner in Apple podcasts or head to purpleplusclub.com to listen on other platforms' Don’t forget that you can join us in person at our upcoming tour, tap the link to find tickets: www.somethingrhymeswithpurple.com Enjoy Susie’s Trio for the week: Gutling: A great eater, a glutton. Anythingarian: One who professes no creed in particular; an indifferentist. Unlike: To give up liking; to cease to like Gyles' poem this week was 'Beside Tragedy' by 'Grace Nichols' Beside Tragedy she is always damned So seemingly carefree to the woes of the world So seemingly enamoured of her own god giving laughter But who sees her waxing tears in the nights deep calm Or knows that she too rides out the dark storm Who hears her whisper, ‘oh tears you too stem from the gift of salt’ A Somethin’ Else & Sony Music Entertainment production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to this special edition of something rhymes with purple. This is the podcast.
0:16.0	As most of you will know by now that it is very much about language, how we use it, why we use it
0:22.1	and where the words that we use come from. I'm Susie Dent and with me as always is the wonderful
0:28.0	jazz brand. Hi, Jiles. Hello, it's good to be with you again. You're in Oxford. I'm in London.
0:33.4	How this works normally is we and the team, Harriet Arvigdusa, we bounce ideas around. But this week,
0:40.4	Susie said, oh, I want to talk about Tony Morrison. And I didn't say to her at the time. I said,
0:45.9	I don't know much about Tony Morrison, though I didn't tell you which I will confess to now that I
0:52.0	did actually meet her many, many years ago, many years ago, before she was famous, really. I met her,
0:58.5	I think, maybe possibly more than once because I knew people in publishing and I was in the States
1:03.7	during my gap year towards the end of the 1960s and then in the early 1970s. And I met her once
1:12.4	because I was introduced by a lovely academic called Sydney Ramy. She introduced me to her. I think
1:19.1	she was working at Random House where she, this was before I think her novels were published,
1:24.0	where she simply was an unusual figure because she was the first black editor there. Yeah.
1:28.5	So I really don't know much about her, but I do know that famous, of course, as an editor,
1:34.0	as a novelist and as a poet. And I know her poetry. But I'm hoping you've chosen her for a special
1:40.4	reason and you're going to tell us why. Yes. Last Wednesday, so the 8th of March was International
1:46.1	Women's Day, but the whole month of March is in fact women's history month. And so I wanted to
1:52.3	choose somebody who has done so much for language, for the English language and sort of dug almost
1:59.2	more deeply and more profoundly than anyone I think I've ever read. I became aware of her because
2:04.2	I was lucky enough to go to Princeton University for three years actually to do a Masters in German,
2:10.1	actually, but she was very much a name at Princeton. I haven't gone to Howard University in Cornell,
2:15.5	University herself. She taught at Howard in the 50s and 60s, as you say, then became a fiction
	...

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