Selected Shorts: Celebrating Toni Morrison

Guest host Tayari Jones (New York Times bestselling author) helps us celebrate Morrison, the American master who died in 2019. Morrison’s novels, including Beloved, Jazz and Song of Solomon, have become an indelible part of the American canon. Her fierce, poetic visions earned her the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She was also an editor, advocate, teacher, and mother.  This program features her essay “A Knowing So Deep,” read by Jones; an excerpt from The Bluest Eye, read by Tony Award-winner Anika Noni Rose; an excerpt from Jazz, read by Emmy and Golden Globe winner S. Epatha Merkerson; “Sweetness,” read by NAACP Image Award winner Phylicia Rashad, and a tribute by Morrison’s close friend Fran Lebowitz.