On Wednesday, Dana Williams, a professor of African American literature and dean of the graduate school at Howard University, spoke at an event titled “On Beauty and Sensibility: Toni Morrison Took a Chance.” In her talk in Pembroke Hall, Williams showcased Morrison’s work as an editor at the Random House publishing company.
The event was co-sponsored by the Department of English, the Department of Africana Studies and the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America.
In his opening remarks, event organizer and Professor of Teaching Excellence in English Kevin Quashie, who teaches ENGL 1760Y: “Toni Morrison,” reflected on how Morrison “tussled through” the idea of “goodness” throughout her career.
As Quashie welcomed Williams on stage, he described Williams as “a paragon of Black literary studies who has tendered intelligence.”
In her talk, Williams discussed her 2025 book, “Toni at Random: The Iconic Writer’s Legendary Editorship,” and argued for the importance of closely examining Morrison’s editorship — not just her authorial work — to find “traces of beauty and sensibility.”
“Her editorial vision was itself an act of defiance,” Williams said at the talk. “But even more so because its attention to notions of beauty as quiet, discerning and bold was different.”
“She took chances on writers whose work embodied truth and complexity, guided by an ever-present sensibility,” Williams added.
In an interview with The Herald, Williams said the idea for “Toni at Random” stemmed from her curiosity about the books Morrison edited.
When conducting research for her book, Williams sifted through archival papers from Random House and interviewed Morrison — who helped guide Williams’s archival search — before the acclaimed author’s death in 2019.
Importantly, Morrison provided opportunities to many writers who “might not have otherwise seen publication at the mainstream publishing house,” Williams told The Herald.
One of these writers was visual artist Barbara Chase-Riboud, who had no formal training as a writer when Morrison took her on. Morrison’s work with Chase-Riboud on her poetry collection, “From Memphis & Peking,” highlighted “the essence of Morrison’s editorial vision, the belief that refinement and risk belong together,” Williams said during the talk.
Even the poetry book’s dust jacket — which “places Chase-Riboud removed in half shadow, half illumination, suggesting an artist negotiating both visibility and death” — was a testament to Morrison’s attention to detail as an editor, Williams said during her talk.
Later, Morrison worked with Lucille Clifton on her poetry collection, “An Ordinary Woman.”
“Morrison’s commitment to beauty, in this case, was structural — a determination to help Clifton achieve coherence, decision, resonance and restraint,” Williams said
Williams concluded her talk by discussing Morrison’s work on “The Black Book,” a compendium of writing and media that depicts the Black experience from 1619 through the 1940s.
“More than any other project,” Williams said, this book “defined Morrison’s editorship.”
“‘The Black Book’ focuses on the heart, the old verities that made being Black and alive in this country the most dynamic existence imaginable,” Williams added.
Bella Wright ’28, an English concentrator, attended the lecture because of their appreciation for Morrison as a novelist.
“I loved it,” Wright said. “I’ve been reading a lot of mostly (Morrison’s) fiction, so this inspired me to read more nonfiction, just for its political clarity.”
In an interview with The Herald before the event, Quashie said he hoped students attending the event would “appreciate or learn something about how a kind of common-sense term like ‘beauty’ has the elasticity to resonate or inspire other ways to think.”
When he organizes events such as this one, Quashie aims to “deepen and slow down the moment,” he said.
“Morrison believed that any reader of her works has a lot of work to do,” Quashie told The Herald. “She was trying, always, to gift the reader the responsibility to do the work.”
“We tend to think about a book once it’s on the shelf. You don’t think about the route to the shelf,” Williams said. “We don’t think at all about the labor of the people who make it possible, and editors really do a lot of invisible labor.”
Additional reporting by Elizabeth Rosenbaum.
Ivy Huang is a university news and science & research editor from New York City Concentrating in English, she has a passion for literature and American history. Outside of writing, she enjoys playing basketball, watching documentaries, and beating her high score on Subway Surfers.
