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A Student Views the Princeton University Classroom of Toni Morrison
SOCIETY, IT SEEMS, has a need to assign labels and categories to individuals, particularly those in the public sphere. In the case of Toni Morrison, one tends to focus on her contribution to literature. In painting this picture of a Nobel prize-winning cultural icon, what is most often left out is her direct influence on the young people she comes into contact with on a daily basis -- her students at Princeton University. Toni Morrison is not simply a writer or a thinken She is an inspirer who has helped me to find my passion and to communicate that passion with grace, confidence, and a strong intellectual foundation.
My relationship with Toni Morrison the professor began about three years ago when I was selected for her class in American Africanism. Knowing only of her reputation as a stem, tough person, I approached my first session with her with a significant amount of fear and an equal sense of apprehension. Quickly, this was dispelled and replaced by a recognition of her warmth and interest in forcing us, her students, to think about very difficult ideas and issues from perspectives we may have never otherwise imagined. Indeed, as the semester progressed, I would find myself, as would many of my peers, laboring increasingly harder to understand theories and concepts that we were beginning to discover in the works...