Morrison on Writing Universally

I found this quote to be so fascinating.  For me, mentioning Emily Dickinson as an example of someone who wrote unapologetically and not for a specific audience makes what Morrison is saying understandable because Dickinson’s collection of work was never intended for an audience and was not even found until after her death.  Morrison definitely does a great job of trying to write universally, allowing a reader of any race to have sympathy for the characters in her novels.  However, some parts about racial struggle are very hard to make universal, and because of the topic, might never be fully understood or relatable to a white man.  In my opinion, it’s okay if not all readers can empathize with every single character in a novel or can relate to a character’s struggle.  So long as the author portrays a character’s plight in a way that allows one of an opposite race or gender to be able to sympathize with that character, I think that the novel is universal.  

Issues of race and gender and being universal are two things that I wouldn’t necessarily pair together.  We discussed the idea of having a person of a different race/gender write about someone else from a different race/gender in class this past week. It’s a good topic of discussion that left many of us unsure, as we could not come up with concrete answers in the moment.  After having some time to think about this, I think as long as the writer does not use the “I” perspective when writing about a character of a different race or gender, it is okay and could be universal.  However, it needs to be known that the author is of a different race or gender, and that the experiences or struggles he/she writes about are not drawn from personal experience.
Writing universally is tricky to do, but I think that Morrison does a great job of it.  She writes clearly and concisely, avoiding the lofty explanations and apologies that she mentions of some authors in her quote.