Why Toni Morrison Matters

Years ago, I was amazed that my Italian friend mentioned that Toni Morrison was her favourite author.  I simply didn't realise and was pleasantly surprised by the universal influence of her writings and I'm reminded of this by the Southbank Centre hosting 'Why Toni Morrison Matters' later this month. 

Toni Morrison's birthday, February 18th, is now an officially celebrated day in her home state of Ohio.  Perhaps best known for novels such as Song of Solomon and Beloved, Morrison was born and raised in Lorain, and her early novels The Bluest Eye and Sula were both set in Ohio. 

She once told an audience at Oberlin College:  'In my work, no matter where it's set, the imaginative process always starts right here on the lip of Lake Erie.'

Ten facts about the incomparable author

How Ohio shaped Morrison's fiction

I am the band

For whatever reason (let's leave that for my future psychoanalyst to uncover), I'm not a huge fan of female musicians but one of the few that I do enjoy and respect is the pretty, tough and confident rocker Liz Phair.  While listening to her music today, I decided to do a little research on her motivations and background and whaddya know, she spent a good deal of her formative years in Ohio.  

Liz Phair was born on April 17, 1967, adopted by John (physician and AIDS researcher) and Nancy (instructor at the Art Institute of Chicago) Phair and spent her early childhood in Ohio. In 1976 the family, which includes an older brother, relocated from Cincinnati to the posh Chicago suburb of Winnetka where Phair grew into a creative adolescent who wrote songs at the family piano but displayed a rebellious streak.  She left Winnetka to attend the quirky liberal Oberlin College in Ohio, where she studied art history and studio art. At Oberlin, she became fascinated with underground indie rock and eventually became friends with guitarist Chris Brokaw, who would later join the alt-rock outfit Come. 


The effect of Oberlin on Phair's music 
(from Contemporary Musicians | 2004 | Brennan, Carol; Gibner, Jason |
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning.) :  Oberlin, like other isolated outposts of middle-class intellectual rebellion, bred bands like other schools breed keg parties; Phair's art studies were supplemented by her informal education in the local music scene. "Oberlin is a really indie rock type of college," Phair told Annette Petruso of Detroit's Metro Times. "It was very much left of center, intellectual and scrawny. Those are the three really good markers of guyville. All of my boyfriends were guyville. They still sort of are." Her first album (Exile in Guyville) was full of songs inspired by this phase of her life. "I was really just trying to impress a bunch of guys," Phair noted of her early musical ambitions. "I am not the band wife. I am the band."  
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