OPINION — “Language alone protects us from the scariness of things with no names.”
Of course, that language from Toni Morrison perfectly suits this time, when the names we give the things that scare us hardly seem enough.
It is fitting that in a week when America has been exposed to the words of a white nationalist screed shared before a man filled with hate murdered 22 human beings in El Paso, Texas, we can find some comfort in Morrison’s life and legacy, and in the power of words used masterfully by the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
