For more than 30 years, the works of Toni Morrison have challenged, inspired, and moved me in the most amazing ways. From The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon to Beloved and Jazz, her books celebrate the fascinating history and culture of ordinary African American people, and I always look forward to reading her essays and listening to her recorded interviews.
This week, I decided to have my own Toni Morrison party, by treating myself to both a book and a documentary video that focus on her life and work.
Having borrowed a Cleveland Public Library copy of Morrison’s The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations (Knopf, 2019) earlier this month, I read and thoroughly enjoyed the author’s “Tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.” and “Cinderella’s Stepsisters” during my lunch hour on Friday.
Promotional artwork for Magnolia Pictures’ new documentary on Toni Morrison.
On Saturday afternoon, I watched the critically acclaimed video, “The Pieces I Am,” which opened in theatres this week, and I now understand why the reviewers are raving. With vintage footage and recent interviews of Morrison, discussions about everything from the author’s Lorain, Ohio roots to her global reading audience, commentary by Sonia Sanchez, Oprah Winfrey, Walter Mosley, and Angela Davis, among others; and the inclusion of historic photographs and contemporary works of visual art, I found this beautiful film to be enlightening and a joy to watch.
I invite you to check out the book and the documentary about this incredibly gifted Ohio native and one of the world’s greatest living literary artists.
–Regennia N. Williams, PhD
About Dr. Regennia N. Williams, Founder, President, and Executive Director
Dr. Regennia N. Williams is the Founder and Executive Director of The RASHAD Center, Inc., a Maryland-based non-profit educational corporation.
Williams holds a PhD in Social History and Policy from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. A native Clevelander and a four-time alumna of Cleveland State University, information on RASHAD's “Praying Grounds, African American Faith Communities: A Documentary and Oral History” project is now available online at www.ClevelandMemory.org/pray/, a site that is maintained by CSU's Library Special Collections, home of the Praying Grounds manuscript collections. Praying Grounds was the primary inspiration for the launching of the Initiative for the Study of Religion and Spirituality in the History of Africa and the Diaspora (RASHAD) at CSU, and links to RASHAD's scholarly journal and newsletter are also available on the Praying Grounds site. On April 28, 2020, the RASHAD Center, Inc. became a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization.
In 2010, Dr. Williams was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar at Nigeria’s Obafemi Awolowo University, where she taught history and directed a RASHAD-related oral history project that focused on the role of religion in recent Nigerian social history. Other research-related travels have taken her to Canada, China, France, South Africa, and Austria.
In 2013, she conceived and produced “Come Sunday @ 70: The Place of Duke Ellington’s Sacred Jazz in World History and Culture, c. 1943-2013,” a project that included scholarly presentations and performing arts activities. From September 1993 until May 2015, she was a faculty member in the Department of History at Cleveland State University. She served as a Fulbright Specialist at South Africa's University of the Free State in the summer of 2019, and completed a short-term faculty residency at Howard University in the fall of 2019. She is based in Cleveland, Ohio.
As a public scholar, her current research projects focus on African American history and culture, especially as it relates to music, religion, and spirituality. She is a member of the Oral History Association, the Western Reserve Historical Society, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
For more than 30 years, the works of Toni Morrison have challenged, inspired, and moved me in the most amazing ways. From The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon to Beloved and Jazz, her books celebrate the fascinating history and culture of ordinary African American people, and I always look forward to reading her essays and listening to her recorded interviews.
The RASHAD Center, Inc. 