When I read the book aloud before audiences, I always read it the same way. Since that time I’ve gone over to the studio and sat in that little cell and recorded all the books I wrote with the right emphasis, accent, and so on. I agreed to do them all, and I think I did everything but - I don’t know if I did Paradise. So I thought, well, then I’ll read it the way I think it ought to sound. She didn’t put the emphasis where I had heard it in my mind. I listened to Woodard because I like her, and then I noticed that she didn’t - let me see how I can put this - the rhythm was wrong. Toni Morrison: I listened to one of the audio recordings that had been done by actresses, like Lynne Thigpen and Alfre Woodard, and both of them were first-rate actresses. Matthew Rubery: Many authors don’t record their own audiobooks, especially not in the 1980s and 1990s. Here’s what she had to say about the art of reading books out loud. Recently I had a chance to speak with Morrison about her audiobooks. Hearing Toni Morrison read aloud is a very different experience from that of reading her to oneself. Her novels can be challenging to follow by ear owing to their lyricism, abrupt shifts in setting, and overall fragmentation, with little authorial guidance to help the reader follow along. Others struggle with her unique cadences and refusal to perform. Some find her speech mesmerizing, even haunting, and embrace it as the novel’s authentic voice. Her reading style has not always been as well received as her writing. Morrison narrates her audiobooks in the same way as she reads books aloud at public events.
But Morrison’s recordings reveal how the author herself imagined the words on the page to sound. These novels have also been recorded by actresses such as Desiree Coleman, Ruby Dee, Lynne Thigpen, and Alfre Woodard. She went on to record all of her other novels including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, Love, A Mercy, and Home. Morrison began her own audio career in 1983 with a recording of Tar Baby for the American Audio Prose Library. The earliest audiobook of Morrison’s work that I have come across is a recording of Sula made by Clipper Audio in 1973.
Morrison is rare among reputable authors in recording her own books. Yet she has received little credit for one achievement: recording her own audiobooks. She has been a pioneering author in countless ways. Morrison’s remarkable achievements as a storyteller have been recognized by nearly every prestigious award possible including the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 2006, the New York Times Book Review voted her novel Beloved as the best American novel of the past 25 years. Toni Morrison is widely recognized as one of America’s greatest living writers.
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