Toni Morrison Is Praised As She Retires

It's hard to believe that she taught as she wrote masterpieces.

Former President Bill Clinton last night praised acclaimed Princeton University professor Toni Morrison for her humanity and exquisite touch with the written word.

"I thank you, my friend, for your great big heart and for using that and your mind to help us to see the grace we must all imagine," Clinton said at the end of his three-minute tribute to Morrison as she prepares to retire from the university.

He then walked over to the Nobel laureate author, seated in the front row, and embraced her.

An invitation-only crowd of about 345 people turned out for the Morrison tribute in the Allen Room of Jazz at Lincoln Center in the Time Warner Center in midtown Manhattan.

The event -- "Toni Morrison: Her Triumphs, Her Contributions, Our Future" -- was in the making for about a year and co-hosted by Princeton University and its program in African-American studies.

In 1993, Morrison became the first black American to win the Nobel Prize in literature, an accomplishment reached after the publication of her first six novels.

The Nobel awarded to Morrison was the first to go to an American-born writer since 1962, when John Steinbeck was the literature laureate.

Morrison is one of 10 retiring Princeton faculty members expected to get the honorary status as professors emeriti early next month, pending approval by Princeton's trustees.

Last night Clinton said reading her books can be all sorts of things, depending on the reader's perspective, "breezy or laboriously difficult," inspiring laughter or tears, anger or joy.

"You can be full of pride or covered in shame . . . but one thing you can't do is retire. You have to engage" when reading one of her books, the former president said.

Other celebrities offering tributes to Morrison were Oscar winning actor Morgan Freeman and Tony Award winning actress Phylicia Rashad.

Rashad thanked Morrison for "your intuitive understanding and feeling for the power of the word to reawaken in us the knowledge of who we really are."

Known for her lyrical portrayals of blacks who endure poverty and disaster, Morrison has written eight novels -- from "The Bluest Eye" in 1970 through "Love" in 2003.

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Fear Factor: BME

With all of the garbage black fiction we have here in the states (which people gobble up, by the way) I'd say that the the UK markets need to catch up!

The book trade is missing a trick by ignoring the potential of the black and ethnic minority (BME) market, says a new report by the Bookseller and the Arts Council.

The Books for All survey of publishers, booksellers, agents and librarians found that a "fear factor" was holding back the book trade from pursuing a growing market and a huge potential source of writing talent.

According to Samenua Sesher, director of decibel (the Arts Council initiative to promote cultural diversity within the arts): "When businesses do not pursue a market as prominent as this, there is a barrier. The fear can be of getting it wrong, of offending, or of being labelled politically correct."

While 7.9% of the UK's population is of ethnic minority origin, only 50 (1%) of this year's top 5,000 bestsellers are by BME writers, despite the high profile of award-winners Zadie Smith, Andrea Levy and Monica Ali.

The report points the finger at publishers who are reluctant to commission books targeted at an ethnic minority group or to tailor books to appeal to a specific audience.

However, publishers who responded to the survey tended to emphasise the importance of the quality of the writing above the cultural setting of a book or the author's own ethnicity.

Jason Arthur, editor of Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal's Tourism (Vintage), commented, "It's probably a lie to say that what is in an author's background has no influence. But the first consideration is always the story and how it's written. "

Another, anonymous, respondent from the publishing industry said, "Colour is a dazzling irrelevance that simply sucks up to the PC brigade. If a submission is good, it's good".

The report is critical of the lack of monitoring that takes place in the publishing process, with 58% of publishers unsure whether the number of submissions received from BME authors has risen, fallen or stayed the same during the past year, but acknowledges that accusations of tokenism can also be damaging.

"Publishers publish a pile of crap, and because it's by an Asian author, people say it's good," said Poorna Shetty, editor of Asiana magazine. "It's either about three generations of women, or an urban Asian woman [who] defies her parents and goes off on her own...there seem to be no strong women writers that aren't rehashing these themes. It's quite depressing".

Booksellers do not get off the hook either. The report says that it is surprising how few bookshop promotions are designed to appeal to specific groups, given that BME readers appear to be an active group of book buyers.

The majority of bookshops ran no such promotions last year, nor did they run any events with a BME author. Fewer than one in five bookshops has a dedicated section for black and ethnic minority customers. The result is that these customers are turning to online shopping. "There is a much stronger network of black writers in America than there is here. I buy these books online," said one member of the survey's focus group.

In contrast to bookshops, libraries are more directly in touch with black and ethnic minority readers than much of the rest of the book trade. Levels of library use by these readers broadly reflect the composition of the UK population as a whole.

Books for All is the second report commissioned by decibel and the Bookseller. The first, In Full Colour, in 2004, looked at the under-representation of BME groups in the publishing industry. Decibel has also initiated a British Book award, or Nibbie, given to the African, Caribbean or Asian writer who is deemed to have made the greatest contribution towards literature during the past year. This year's decibel Nibbie was won by Diana Evans for 26a.