Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship

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)