With the ascendance of Toni Morrison's literary star, it has become commonplace for critics to de-racialize her by saying that Morrison is not just a "Black woman writer," that she has moved beyond the limiting confines of race and gender to larger "universal" issues. Yet Morrison, a Nobel laureate with six highly acclaimed novels, bristles at having to choose between being a writer or a Black woman writer, and willingly accepts critical classification as the latter.

To call her simply a writer denies the key roles that Morrison's African-American roots and her Black female perspective have played in her work. For instance, many of Morrison's characters treat their dreams as "real," are nonplussed by visitations from dead ancestors, and generally experience intimate connections with beings whose existence isn't empirically verifiable. While critics might see Morrison's use of the supernatural as purely a literary device, Morrison herself explains, "That's simply the way the world was for me and the Black people I knew."

Just as her work has given voice to this little-remarked facet of African-American culture, it has affirmed the unique vantage point of the Black woman. "I really feel the range of emotion and perception I have had access to as a Black person and a female person are greater than that of people who are neither," says Morrison. "My world did not shrink because I was a Black female writer. It just got bigger."

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