MISS CHLOE

The joys, challenges, and lasting lessons of a friendship with Chloe Ardelia Wofford, aka Toni Morrison.

"When I met Toni Morrison in person, I had been her reader and her cheerleader for dozens of years," writes Verdelle. What followed was more than two decades of friendship and hero worship, including delights and resentments big and small (the author is still wondering why Morrison had to steal her favorite scarf), along with "two and a half spats" dished in detail. Morrison may have been a diva in many ways, but Verdelle couldn't have met her under more auspicious circumstances. In 1997, after she received a copy of Verdelle's first (and only) published novel, The Good Negress, Morrison sent back an unsolicited appreciation, almost unheard of. She went on to get the younger author invited to teach at Princeton, where she herself was ensconced alongside Black luminaries like Cornel West, Nell Painter, and Yusef Komunyakaa. Princeton was a mixed bag for Verdelle, who was ultimately repulsed by the overwhelming privilege on display. (She now teaches at Morgan State, a historically Black college in Baltimore.) Verdelle writes forcefully about the individual novels and about Morrison's achievement as a whole. “Relentlessly stripping the hegemonic gaze,” she writes, “Morrison made us and our human complexities so visible, in language so eloquent and deep, that the whole of world literature could not deny her innovation and brilliance." Elsewhere, she writes, "Morrison is to literature as James Brown is to popular culture”—the essence of Black and proud. The book is too long in the way of a phone conversation where the other person keeps thinking of one more thing they have to tell you, but luckily enough, that turns out to be interesting, as well. Verdelle is not afraid to grind an ax if necessary, and the one involving the failure of her second novel to see print is sharp indeed. Maybe something can be done about that.

Passionate, personal, insightful, testy, and unique.