In the Title
The title of Morrison’s essay “A Slow Walk of Trees (as Grandmother Would Say) Hopeless (as Grandfather Would Say)” is purposely enticing precisely because of its less than obvious metaphor. Being the fair writer she is, Morrison does not leave the reader foundering in the wilderness of wonder, but instead offers a precise a definition of the titular metaphor through the contextual use of simile:
“like the slow walk of certain species of trees from the flatlands up into the mountains, she would see the signs of irrevocable and permanent change.”
The Literary Canon
“Unspeakable Things Unspoken” is a long, complex examination of the place that African-American literature fits within the paradigm of American literature overall. Part of this analysis is a focus on the significance of the literary canon; the works of literature routinely entered into the nation’s educational curriculum. Morrison transforms the prosaic meaning of this selection of literature into a symbolic weapon of culture:
“Canon building is empire building. Canon defense is national defense.”
Any Resemblance to Actual Persons is Coincidental
In “Memory, Creation, and Writing” Morrison turns her focus on literary analysis inwards as she analyzes her own processes. One of the common processes among writers—creating characters which are essentially thinly veiled fictionalizations of real-life acquaintances—is one that she rejects wholeheartedly in metaphoric fashion:
“There is no yeast for me in a real-life person, or else there is so much it is not useful—it is done-bread already baked.)”
The Spectacle of O.J.
Morrison wrote an essay which serves as the introduction to a series of essays by other writers covering the subject of the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Her take on the issue is that it was pure spectacle; justice as theater:
“The gargantuanism of the trial—its invention of wild dogs and angels, stick figures and clowns, its outlawry—aroused immediate suspicion.”
Race and Writing
“Home” is another essay on the subject of writing and one in which Morrison is forced to confront and admit the inescapable fact that no matter how liberating the art of creating literature may be for black writers, there is always lying underneath a mechanism beyond the reach of the author’s control:
“Whatever the forays of my imagination, the keeper, whose keys tinkled always within earshot, was race.”
