the source of self regard essays speeches meditations

Like Fitzgerald, she is intensely private. Like Fitzgerald, she rose from humble beginnings to world prominence. And while you’ll likely see a donkey fly before you see her stand before a bunch of Harvard undergraduates and sing on demand, the fact is Toni Morrison is very much like Ella Fitzgerald. Toni Morrison, the author and Nobel Prize winner, turned 88 on Feb. Which brings to mind another first lady in her field. She stood at the microphone, and sang a soft a cappella verse from the 1930 song “I’ve Got a Crush on You.” She forgot the lyrics in the middle, then remembered them, and ended by pointing at the kids and singing “I love you … and you … and you. Sing your own damn selves, was my thought.īut the First Lady of Song was gracious. And these privileged kids, some of whom had marched in a giddy parade earlier dressed in tutus and clown costumes in a time-honored Harvard tradition that was somehow venerable because, well, they’d been doing it at Harvard for decades, wanted her to sing. Now at 64, she was feeble, nearly blind, the diabetes that would plague her until the end of her life some agonizing years later already crippling her ability to walk. She sang her way to the top of the music world. When she was 15, her mother died, and she essentially wandered around New York City in the mid-1930s as a homeless teenager, until the bandleader Chick Webb gave her a gig - and Webb had to be talked into it, because female singers were adornments in those days. As a child, she was a musical genius, born with perfect pitch. In clubs and juke joints, at weddings and dances, in sweatboxes, filthy bars and rancid watering holes, even at a Harvard class reunion two decades before. “Sing, Ella!” they shouted, “Sing, Ella, sing!” When Fitzgerald stood at the podium to offer her thanks, a young voice suddenly piped out, “Sing, Ella!” A second student shouted, “Please sing, Ella!” A chorus quickly enveloped the room.

The ceremony took place in a theater packed with students. The award that year went to the jazz vocalist Ella Fitzgerald. In 1982, when I was a 24-year-old reporter at The Boston Globe, I was sent to cover Harvard University’s Hasty Pudding Woman of the Year ceremony. THE SOURCE OF SELF-REGARD Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations By Toni Morrison

The source of self regard essays speeches meditations