By Laura Zornosa
Toni Morrison’s Beloved tells the story of formerly enslaved people whose home is haunted, while Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. follows a sixth-grader growing up in an interfaith family. Although these literary giants are worlds away in subject matter—the Black American experience and (white, Jewish) adolescence, respectively—they both defied the “traditionalist” characterization of the Silent Generation. Morrison died in 2019 at 88; Blume is 88 now.
Two new biographies, Judy Blume: A Life by Mark Oppenheimer and On Morrison by Namwali Serpell, delve into the lives and works of these two contemporaries. The former hews more closely to the contours of a conventional biography. The latter is a work-by-work close reading of Morrison’s oeuvre. Both books share two key distinctions: Though they clearly hold their subjects in high esteem, they also believe that excavating such genius merits precision.
Biographies without the pedestals
Serpell analyzes Morrison with a fine-tooth comb. “Morrison’s critical style—entwining the personal, the political, and the analytical—along with her two-fold aim to be both rigorous and accessible set the template for how I wrote On Morrison,” Serpell told LitHub.
Oppenheimer approached his subject with a similarly focused eye, to the point where he and Blume have essentially stopped talking. The book doesn’t disparage her, but it reveals her vulnerabilities in a way that will remind fans of the characters in her books: imperfect, big-hearted, and lovable.
“When you decide to write a biography, you don’t work for the subject. You work for the reader,” Oppenheimer told The New York Times. “Judy was an amazing interview subject who was incredibly generous with her time, and at a certain point, it had to become my book.”
So many of us put Morrison, Blume, and their inimitable work on pedestals. These two new biographies bring us to eye level with these legends, to look them in the eye and ask what makes them tick.
Fans of the two women’s award-winning literature will appreciate the honesty and directness that made them both famous.
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We spend a lot of time thinking about what’s worth your attention, and that goes for books as much as any performance or art exhibit. Welcome to 1MC’s curated shelf: five categories, thirty titles, refreshed every season, and always linked to independent booksellers through Bookshop.org.
Discover:
- The Green Room – Memoirs, biographies, scripts, and performance culture from the creators who make it.
- Conversation Starters – Society, identity, culture, and the changemakers we can’t stop thinking about.
- Liner Notes – Music biography, legacy, and culture. No skips.
- Fresh Ink – Fiction worth clearing your schedule for.
- When Art Speaks – The stories behind the images, objects, and creatives who left their mark.
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