“Of course I'm a black writer…. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin American writer aren't marginal anymore. We have to acknowledge that the thing we call "literature" is more pluralistic now, just as society ought to be. The melting pot never worked. We ought to be able to accept on equal terms everybody from the Hassidim to Walter Lippmann, from the Rastafarians to Ralph Bunche.”

—  Toni Morrison

Interview in Newsweek (30 March 1981)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Of course I'm a black writer…. I'm not just a black writer, but categories like black writer, woman writer and Latin Am…" by Toni Morrison?
Toni Morrison photo
Toni Morrison 184
American writer 1931–2019

Related quotes

Steve Martin photo

“Yeah, well, we're all writers, aren't we? He's a writer that hasn't been published, and I'm a writer who hasn't written anything.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Source: Picasso at the Lapin Agile and Other Plays

Bell Hooks photo

“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"… No woman has ever written enough.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: remembered rapture: the writer at work

Vanna Bonta photo

“I'm not an intellectual, I'm just a writer.”

Vanna Bonta book Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel

Source: Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel (1995), Ch. 17

“A bad writer is just a good writer with writer's block.”

Darby Conley (1970) American cartoonist

Strip from November 18, 2006
Bucky Katt

Katherine Mansfield photo

“I'm a writer first & a woman after.”

Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) New Zealand author

Letter to John Middleton Murry (3 December 1920), from The Collected Letters of Katherine Mansfield, vol. IV

Denise Chávez photo

“Remember that the Latino, Chicano, Mexican American writers are following in the footsteps of the African American writers. This has to do with the antepasados, the people who have come before you, who allow you to take the steps you need to take. I always thank the Black writers because they gave me a sense of freedom…”

Denise Chávez (1948) American writer

On the parallels between African American literature and Chicano literature in “AN INTERVIEW WITH DENISE CHAVEZ” https://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1161&context=ijcs in Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies (1994)

John Banville photo

“I'm also lumbered with the title of being a writer's writer, which is the worst possible reputation you can have, because, of course, other writers don't read other writers except to gain evidence against them. And it puts readers off.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville: claiming Kafka as an Irish writer (2011)

Joyce Carol Oates photo

“Any number of definitions help to determine who we are. It doesn't hurt to be a woman writer, an American woman writer, American woman writer of the 21st century. I think all these descriptions of us — and they're descriptions and adjectives that pertain to you — none of them diminish you, really. I think that maybe there's a kind of deepening or expansion the more identifications you have.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Tavis Smiley interview (2005)

Related topics