G11: Language and Power: Essays

Rediscovering black history

But there was one set of signs that was not malevolent; it was, in fact, rather reassuring in its accuracy and fine distinctions: the pair that said “White Ladies” and “Colored Women.”

Morrison reflects on how ‘the pitched battle between remembering and forgetting’ powered her novels, and in particular, Beloved

Nine years after a white boy spit at my son and accused him of being black, this year a white boy accused him of not being black. He was confused. “Well,” I said, “white people complain a lot. They use blackness for lots of things—for whatever is going on in the world. Please don't let them define you."

I was boyish. I wanted desperately not to be that way, not to be a mixture of both things, but instead just one, a girl. As soft and as pink as a nursery.

Several pages--click the links at the bottom of each section

There were no mail boys at Newsweek, only mail girls. If you were a college graduate (like me) who had worked on your college newspaper (like me) and you were a girl (like me), they hired you as a mail girl. If you were a boy (unlike me) with exactly the same qualifications, they hired you as a ­reporter and sent you to a bureau somewhere in America