Toni Morrison was a ‘literary mother’ to countless writers

NEW YORK — When author Angela Flournoy was asked to dress as her favorite literary character for a magazine shoot four years ago, she knew how to look the part: a wide and “severe hat,” a fur stole and the kind of stare that dares you to stare back. For a day she could pretend to be Sula Peace, from Nobel laureate Toni Morrison’s novel “Sula,” an ode to female friendship and how it can endure the most shameless betrayals. “The thing that has always drawn me to Sula is that she is extremely complicated,” says Flournoy, whose novel “The Turner House” was a National Book Award finalist in 2015, “and the narrative doesn’t make any excuses for her bad behavior, or ever make her less worthy.” Toni Morrison died this week at age 88 and left behind countless writers for whom her characters were like close acquaintances and her stories like parables to guide them through their own lives. Jamel Brinkley, a National Book Award finalist last fall for the story collection “A Lucky Man,” was a teenager when he read “The Bluest Eye,” Morrison’s 1970 novel about a black girl wishing for blue eyes. Morrison’s response: “That, my dear, is called reading.” Saeed Jones, a prize-winning poet whose memoir “How We Fight for Our Lives” comes out this fall, remembered repeated efforts to read “The Bluest Eye” and the Morrison novel “Tar Baby.” In 10th grade, he managed to finish “Sula,” a book he had to discover on his own because his school didn’t assign any black writers.