The artful documentary, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, is for any emerging writer or person of color wanting to know what living fearlessly looks like. It starts with a spectacular collage of textures, paper, and photos of the legendary Nobel Prize-winning storyteller. In the opening alone you get a sense of how the film will navigate through Morrison’s life: showing her as an inquisitive adolescent to the pensive and elegant person she is today. It’s a reminder that not only will we look inside of her famous and controversial novels, we will also get a glimpse inside her very life and imagination.  

A Documentary To Cherish

What I loved most about the film was how much this story wasn’t exactly a puzzle filmmaker, Timothy Greenfield-Sander, had to put together all by himself. Toni Morrison was very much present and telling her story, seated in the dead-center of the screen. As her peers― friends, literary critics, and even Oprah― spoke about her impact, I noticed they were on either side of the screen because only one person was allowed to look straight into the camera and talk about the intricacies of Toni Morrison.

The documentary takes you straight into her humor, intelligence, and maverick-like nature by weaving together significant moments in her life that deeply influenced her legendary career. If you didn’t know, she was a professor and the first Black Female editor at Random House. She specifically edited and published black thought during the Black Power Movement, helping Angela Davis, Muhammad Ali, and many others tell their stories. Her own story is like a piece of fabric stitched into a Black American quilt. Morrison is someone who can vividly tell you about a point in time, making you understand that history didn’t just happen in a general sense, it was lived and experienced by real people. And through documenting her life, we are able to see a part of what makes Black American stories in this country so poignant, intricate, and beautifully unique. 

The Toni Morrison Impact

There are so many quotable moments when Toni Morrison talks about her work. Even if you haven’t read many of her books, you may suspect that she got a lot of flack for writing about Black characters and Black life. But the awe-inspiring aspect of Morrison is how visionary she was in simply standing her ground and proclaiming to the world that Black stories can, and do, exist outside of the white male gaze. 

I didn’t want to speak for Black people, I wanted to speak to Black people― to us.

― Toni Morrison

Morrison has the uncanny ability to succinctly encapsulate ideas and concepts that you may feel but are unable to articulate. She sees very clearly and she tells the audience how she noticed writers, white and black, were only ever addressing a white audience. No one was ever talking to her and especially never considering a Black audience. Morrison is such a maverick because she wanted to change this and actually succeeded in transforming the canon of American literature! It was also so interesting to learn that she couldn’t call herself a writer until her commercially successful book, Song of Solomon. She had published books prior, Sula and The Bluest Eye, but she had called herself “a teacher who writes” and other labels instead of the one that she perfectly embodied. The documentary does an incredible job of showing how relatable and supremely wise she can be. I saw this film at the ArcLight in Hollywood and I hope you get to see it soon as well! 

Finally, I want to leave you with another outstanding quote. As a professor, Morrison told her students, “I don’t want you to write what you know― you don’t know anything. I want you to invent.” This quote is a nugget of pure inspiration whether you’re a writer or not! It’s a reminder that we don’t have to be limited by what’s around us, imagine something entirely fresh and exhilarating.

Watch The Trailor & Fall In Love!

Featured Image: Magnolia Films

Follow Me: Twitter | Instagram | Facebook

Best,

Kai