48 Black Writers Protest By Praising Morrison
By EDWIN McDOWELL
Published: January 19, 1988
New York Times
Forty-eight black writers and critics have signed a statement deploring the fact that Toni Morrison has not won a National Book Award or the Pulitzer Prize - something they attribute to ''oversight and harmful whimsy.''
Among the signers are the writers Maya Angelou and Amiri Baraka, the novelists John Edgar Wideman and John A. Williams, and the critic Henry Louis Gates Jr. Described by its authors as a tribute to Ms. Morrison, and written partly in the form of an open letter to her, the statement will be published in The New York Times Book Review of Jan. 24.
In a companion piece, the poet June Jordan and the critic Houston A. Baker Jr., who also joined in the tribute to Ms. Morrison, deplore the failure of James Baldwin to receive either award. Mr. Baldwin died last month. ''We grieve,'' their statement says, ''because we cannot yet assure that such shame, such national neglect, will not occur again, and then, again.'' 'Beloved' a Double Runner-Up
''Beloved,'' Ms. Morrison's most recent novel, about the remembrances of a former slave in post-Civil War Ohio, was a finalist for both the National Book Award, which was won by ''Paco's Story'' by Larry Heinemann, and the National Book Critics Circle Award, which was won last week by ''The Counterlife'' by Philip Roth.
Ms. Morrison's novel ''Song of Solomon,'' won the National Book Critics Circle Award as the best work of fiction published in 1977. Nevertheless, the 48 signers say that because of her failure to receive either or both of the other awards, ''she has yet to receive the national recognition that her five major works of fiction entirely deserve.''
Mr. Wideman said yesterday that the purpose of the letter was not to influence the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for literature, which will be awarded in April, but simply to praise a deserving writer.
''I thought of the letter as, No. 1, a tribute,'' he said, ''and No. 2, an announcement that a group of black writers, thinkers and intellectuals can speak collectively. There are times and occasions when that group needs to speak out on issues.''
Mr. Wideman, the winner of a PEN/Faulkner award for his novel ''Sent for You Yesterday,'' said judges should vote acording to their conscience. Alternatives, Not Absolutes
''But are there alternative ways of looking at quality?'' he asked. ''Of course there are. And that's what this letter, as I see it, was trying to address. It is not an order but a point of view, and it should be seen in the context of democratizing, not tyrannizing the standards and notions of literary quality.''
Mr. Wideman said that if he were a judge ''I'd read the letter, think about it and look around and see that I wasn't overlooking anybody for lack of information or sensitivity.''
The 48 writers praised ''Beloved'' as Ms. Morrison's ''most recent gift to our community, our country, our conscience.'' Their statement added, ''For all of America, for all of American letters, you have advanced the moral and artistic standards by which we must measure the daring and the love of our national imagination and our collective intelligence as a people.''