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Toni Morrison
© Nancy Crampton
TONI MORRISON

The Art of Fiction No. 134
Interviewed by Claudia Brodsky Lacour, Elissa Schappell
Issue 128, Fall 1993
View a manuscript page

From the Interview
INTERVIEWER
There have been so few novels about women who have intense friendships with other women. Why do you think that is?

MORRISON
It has been a discredited relationship. When I was writing Sula I was under the impression that for a large part of the female population a woman friend was considered a secondary relationship. A man and a woman’s relationship was primary. Women, your own friends, were always secondary relationships when the man was not there. Because of this, there’s that whole cadre of women who don’t like women and prefer men. We had to be taught to like one another. Ms. magazine was founded on the premise that we really have to stop complaining about one another, hating, fighting one another, and joining men in their condemnation of ourselves—a typical example of what dominated people do. That is a big education.
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