May 12, 2005

She’s beloved

Literary great Toni Morrison talked about her 20-year relationship with the late Leon Forrest, the acclaimed Northwestern professor for whom the lecture is named. In the Leon Forrest Lecture on May 2, Morrison, who was Forrest’s editor, colleague and friend, touched upon  his “majestic” language and strong narrative  in his novels about the South Side of Chicago. She also shared the challenges of writing novels with race-inflected language, dissecting a passage from “Beloved” to illustrate the vast territory to be explored within the “bruising language of race.” She was introduced by Dwight McBride (left), her first research assistant at Princeton University and now the Leon Forrest Professor at Northwestern.