Toni Morrison wrote her first novel, The Bluest Eye, at age 39.
For a long time she had wanted to read a book about “the most vulnerable person in society…and it wasn’t around, so I started writing it,” she told Hilton Als in a 2014 interview.
Ms. Morrison’s most vulnerable person: female, child, black.
I live in the opposite end of that vulnerability spectrum: male, middle-aged, white. I have been broke and unemployed, but I’ve never experienced the abject vulnerability of a little girl in South Sudan. During the year I was scraping by, I possessed a college education, access to health care, a home in a safe, prosperous city, and a safety net – a family that could take me in or write me a check if things really got bad.
So as we begin our launch of UrantiaVoice, we focus on two things. Last week we observed the final week of Jesus’ life whose perfect love for all humanity inspires us.
This week, we’re mindful of individuals with real problems and challenges. In our News item today we link to Stephen Liddell’s blog in which he lists the 10 most oppressed minorities in the world. It’s a strong list. He starts with the 10th and works backwards. He and Toni Morrison would agree with Number 1.
The list is from 2017, and since then we’ve seen the increased persecution of the Rohingyas, Muslims who’ve lived for centuries in the majority Buddhist Myanmar, and their mass migration into Bangladesh and other countries. I’d add them to the list.
We celebrate God on UrantiaVoice. And we celebrate his/her children, seeking to ennoble, empower, and remember the most vulnerable.