Toni at Random The iconic writer's legendary editorship

Williams chronicles the venerable novelist Toni Morrison's deeply influential run as a book editor at Random House, offering a fresh look at her career and life. As she writes: "Everything about Toni Morrison's distinguished editorship pointed to her understanding of that one truth--that any attempt to revolutionize the publishing industry to be more inclusive of Black authors and Black stories would require an army of people united by a belief in literary and artistic excellence in Black culture." This absorbing portrait of Morrison as an editor of fiction, poetry, essays, and many other genres who worked to enhance and expand that artistic excellence is vividly drawn with firsthand accounts and insights into the extraordinary care and insight she brought to her relationships with the cultural icons and intellectual heavyweights of the day. While there is no shortage of biographical works about Morrison the author, Williams offers a distinct, in-depth, and essential focus on Morrison's legacy as an editor, combining a scholarly approach based on detailed research with an accessibility that will appeal to a wide range of readers.

Howard University English professor Williams (In the Light of Likeness--Transformed) spotlights Toni Morrison's efforts to shepherd Black literature into the mainstream in this enthralling chronicle of her tenure as an editor at Random House in the 1960s and '70s. Drawing on Morrison's correspondence, Williams assembles rousing stories of her editorial projects that coalesce into a rich portrait of her interests and politics. Her first project at the imprint, a 1972 anthology of African literature, laid the groundwork for her "editorial aesthetic." She also worked on To Die for the People by Black Panther Party founder Huey P. Newton and The Case for Black Reparations by legal scholar Boris Bittker; championed poets Barbara Chase-Riboud, Lucille Clifton, and June Jordan; and went to bat for transgressive writers like Wesley Brown, Leon Forrest, and John McCluskey. Williams reveals Morrison to be an editor whose instincts went beyond the recognition of great writing; she shows Morrison as a decisive voice in how the books she edited should be marketed, and steadfast in her belief that Black writing should be taken seriously. The result is a triumphant account of an underexplored aspect of Morrison's influence on American literature. (June)

The Nobel Prize winner had a storied career as an editor. Literary scholar Williams draws on interviews and archives to chronicle the publishing career of Toni Morrison (1931-2019), who served as a senior editor at Random House beginning in 1972. After earning a master's degree in English from Cornell, Morrison taught at Howard University before taking an editorial job at L.W. Singer, a small textbook publishing house that had been recently acquired by Random House. When Random House decided to close the Singer offices, Morrison came to their attention as a likely editor who could further the publisher's goal of attracting Black writers to their list. Williams closely examines some of the prominent books Morrison edited (a full list is appended), the authors she worked with (Muhammad Ali, for one), and her strategies for publicizing them. Through astute marketing and promotion, Morrison was convinced that she could build a Black book-buying audience and move Black culture "from the margin to the center." Her first project was an anthology,Contemporary African Literature, intended as a high school textbook but also aimed at a general readership. The book, Williams writes, "quietly announced Morrison's editorial aesthetic." Another early project wasThe Black Book, a compendium of photos, posters, memorabilia--similar toThe Whole Earth Catalog--that Morrison saw as a "folk journey of Black America." Morrison was a hands-on editor, providing years-long writing guidance to her authors, helping to choose titles (she suggested the title for Williams' book) and cover art, soliciting blurbs, and managing publicity. She often forged close friendships with her writers, including Toni Cade Bambara and Angela Davis. Engaged in her own writing at the same time that she worked at Random House, Morrison, Williams amply shows, was a paragon of "fearless determination." A well-researched biographical study. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.