World Literature: Namwali Serpell’s “On Morrison”

Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and one of our most beloved writers, has inspired generations of readers. As Namwali Serpell puts it, “she is our only truly canonical black female writer—and her work is highly complex.” This World Literature program welcomes Namwali and moderator Anderson Tepper to discuss her incredible new work, On Morrison. In it, Namwali brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and a professor who teaches a course on Morrison to illuminate the legendary author’s masterful experiments with literary form.

“It is nearly impossible not to be spellbound by Namwali Serpell’s talents. Her novels, The Old Drift and The Furrows, though very different—one set in a past and future Southern Africa, the other careening across contemporary United States—are equally revelatory. With On Morrison, she trains her gaze on one of literature’s great modern masters, Toni Morrison, and gives us a deep, affirming masterclass of her own to savor.” —Anderson Tepper

This work is Morrison as you’ve never encountered her before. It is a journey through her oeuvre—her fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry—with contextual guidance and original close readings. At once accessible and uncompromisingly rigorous, On Morrison is a primer not only on how to read one of the most significant American authors of all time but also on how to read great works of literature in general. This dialogue on the page between two black women artist-readers is stylish, edifying, and thrilling in its scope and intelligence. In addition to a standard reading and discussion, Namwali will also guide audience members through a close reading of a passage by Toni Morrison. 

About the Author:

Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in New York. Her debut novel, The Old Drift, won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times’s Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her second novel, The Furrows, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and was selected as one of The New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year. Her book of essays, Stranger Faces, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. She is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction, the Caine Prize for African Writing, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award. She is a professor of English at Harvard University.

About the Moderator:

Anderson Tepper is a guest curator of PEN America’s World Voices Festival and a longstanding member of the Brooklyn Book Festival’s Literary Council and international committee. Formerly of Vanity Fair, his writing on books and authors has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, and World Literature Today, among other publications. Anderson also serves on City of Asylum’s Advisory Board.

About Your Visit: 

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