As she hums and I read, my ardor for more—to eat and to read—grows as the book’s pages rustle in the sweet air. Reading Toni Morrison as a Black girl, a Black teen, or a young Black woman is ...

Today, Toni Morrison is identified as a national treasure ... leaving only its odor and a hard, sweet sludge, impossible to scrape off”—an image only accessible to someone who has had to ...