What is it to miss an icon? A sorcerer of words? She who, as editors, resurrected black writers from the reject pile into pillars in black literary genealogy? She who gifted the world the gifts of Gayl Jones, Lucille Clifton, and Henry Dumas? What is it to miss she who employed prose to build worlds—worlds…

Though I met Morrison as a child, I did not understand her until I was an adult. I was an adolescent who pursued her text perilously. Like Beloved protagonist Sethe, I journeyed to the unknown knowing that what lied ahead was better than what I was leaving behind. Reading Beloved change me, delineating the full…