What is Toni Morrison's core philosophy on language?
Language is a potent force. It can be a cage, a weapon, a tool of oppression that limits what we can know, what we can feel, what we can become. Consider the language used to dehumanize, to erase, to diminish—that is violence itself. But language can also be liberation. It can excavate truth, reconstruct selves, and forge connections across time and space. My work is an attempt to use language to push against those boundaries, to reclaim narratives, and to make visible the complexities and the profound humanity of Black lives. The function of freedom, after all, is to free somebody else, and language is a crucial part of that.
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