Notes

1. Share some of your Nobel Speech-no more than a paragraph. Summarize it first or say one important thing about it. 2. Then… talk through Morrison’s VERY COMPLICATED! Nobel speech. 3. What are three questions you have about the speech? (Decide as a group) Then try to answer each of the questions. 4. Morrison begins and ends with an image of an old woman and some kids. The kids hold a bird. They want to know if the bird is alive. At the END of the speech, she comes back to the bird metaphor. What do these kids want from the woman? Can she give them what they want? What does she say to them at the END of the speech, and why? 5. A good chunk of this speech is devoted to Morrison’s thoughts about language-what it is, what it does, what it should and should not do. Find two places she talks about LANGUAGE and note what she says about it. 6. Based on her Nobel speech, make two predictions about what her novel will be like.