토니 모리슨, 2016년 인터뷰
토니 모리슨의 <빌러브드>를 읽는데, 한강의 <소년이 온다> 마냥 문장 곳곳에 깊은 슬픔이 서려있다. 어떻게 이런 글을 쓸 수 있는 것일까.
토니 모리슨의 인터뷰를 찾아 읽고 있다. 노벨 문학상을 수상한 최초의 흑인 여성 작가인 그녀도 불과 몇 년 전인(2016년 1월) 라디오 인터뷰에서 이런 방어적인 대화를 해야 했구나. 자신이 어린아이였을 때, 술 취한 백인 남성이 자신을 쫓아 계단을 올라오자 자신의 아버지가 그 남자를 계단 아래로 던진 사건을 말하자, 라디오 진행자가 그 이야기는 두 가지 이유에서 끔찍하다(terrifying)이라고 말한다. 그 백인 남자가 당신을 해하려 따라왔다고 생각했다는 것과 그 남자를 밀친 아버지의 행동을 두고 망가진 자전거를 먼저 생각했다는 것은 모두 이상하다는 것이다.
그 말을 듣고서, 모리슨은 해명을 시작한다.
토니 모리슨의 언어는 2016년에도 이런 제약 속에서 살아야 했구나. 놀라운 언어를 세상에 남기고 2019년 세상을 떠난 그녀의 명복을 빈다.
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MORRISON: I think his own experience in Georgia would have made him think that any white man bumbling up the stairs toward our apartment was not there for any good. And since we were little girls, he assumed that. I think he made a mistake. I mean, I really think the man was drunk. I don't think he was really (laughter) trailing us. But the interesting thing was, A, the white man was - he survived. B, the real thing for me was I thought - I felt profoundly protected and defended. I was not happy because after my father threw him down the steps all the way out into the street, he threw our tricycle after him. That was a little bit of a problem, since we needed our tricycle.
But that made me think that there was some deviltry, something evil about white people, which is exactly what my father thought. He was very, very serious in his hatred of white people. What mitigated it was my mother, who was exactly the opposite, who never rejected or accepted anybody based on race or color or religion or any of that. Everybody was an individual whom she approved of or disapproved of based on her perception of them as individuals.
GROSS: It sounds - you said that this incident made you feel protected. It sounds terrifying, though, for two reasons. One is that your father basically gave you the idea that this man was coming upstairs to do you harm. And, two, watching your father not only throw him down the stairs, but throwing your tricycle down the stairs after him, it sounds like that would be a little frightening to see also.
MORRISON: Well, if it was you and a black man was coming up the stairs after a little white girl and the white father threw the black man down, that wouldn't disturb you.
GROSS: I'm trying to think that through. I guess, you know, I guess...
MORRISON: My father felt about...
GROSS: I think it's a product of being in this, like, not-very-violent, working-class, middle-class family where I didn't see a lot of violence when I was growing up, so any violent act would probably have been very unnerving to me.
MORRISON: Well, it was my father who could do no wrong. So I didn't think of it as, oh, look, my father's a violent man. He never, you know, spanked us. He never quarreled with us. He never argued with us. He was dedicated and he was sweet. So he did this thing to protect his children. Now, I lived in a little working-class town that had no black neighborhoods at all - one high school. We all played together. Everybody was either somebody from the South or an immigrant from East Europe or from Mexico. And there was one church, and there were four elementary schools. And we were all, pretty much until the end of the war, very, very poor. My neighbors were from - my mother's neighbors, who brought her stuffed cabbage, were from Czechoslovakia - what used to be called Czechoslovakia. So that I'm not at all a person who has been reared or raised in a community in which these racial lines were that pronounced. Occasionally, as children, we might figure out how to call somebody a name, and they would figure out how to call us. But it wasn't - it was so light. It was so fluffy. I didn't really have a strong awareness of segregation and the separation of races until I left Lorain, Ohio.
