Listening to Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon While Taking My Braids Aloose

There was something very honest about listening to a Black woman tell a story about Black people while I was doing a very Black thing. It felt very central, ancestral. Toni Morrison’s voice was softer, more delicate than I expected it to be. But there was also something raw and coarse about it, in a very familiar way. If you listen closely, you discover that there’s something buried in her voice, like there’s a thick lump of molasses caught in her throat, like she’s swallowing back what’s not quite sadness, not quite rage, but more like the awe of both of them. Listening to her felt natural and intimate, like my kinky hair roots, the story unraveling like my braids.