Namwali Serpell on Toni Morrison and the Black World | NYBALF 2026

Namwali Serpell opens NYBALF 2026 with a keynote on Toni Morrison, Black literary inheritance, Africa, memory, form and the worlds Morrison’s writing continues to make possible. Recorded September 18, 2026, at Harlem Stage, The Gatehouse, as part of the New York Black & African Literature Festival. TONI MORRISON AND THE BLACK WORLD Opening Keynote by Namwali Serpell Moving across Morrison’s fiction, criticism and literary relationships, Serpell considers how Morrison read and wrote Africa, how her imagination connected Africa and Black America, and what becomes visible when we read her outside inherited literary divisions. NAMWALI SERPELL Namwali Serpell is a Zambian writer, critic and professor of English at Harvard University. Her books include The Old Drift, The Furrows, Stranger Faces and On Morrison. Her work has received the Caine Prize, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, a Windham-Campbell Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. CHAPTERS 00:00 Morrison's "Village Literature" as an Afro-Diasporic Aesthetic 03:00 Reading Africa: Lorain, the Church, Howard and the "White Gaze" 09:07 Morrison as Editor: Contemporary African Literature, Herskovits and Chinweizu 18:30 Morrison Writes Africa: Retentions, Syncretism and Paralepsis 22:21 Song of Solomon: The Flying Africans, Pilate and Eshu 25:43 Beloved: An African Survivor and a Murdered Child in One Being 33:30 How Africans Read Morrison: Achebe and Her Literary Heirs 36:58 Morrison Never Went to Africa 38:48 Q&A: A Modern Zambia and the Novel as Morrison's Form 45:37 Q&A: Why Morrison Would Have Resisted the "Diaspora Wars" The keynote formed part of NYBALF 2026: THE VILLAGE IN THE BOOK: LITERATURE AND THE NEAR, an edition of the festival exploring what literature owes to the places, languages and communities nearest to it. NYBALF 2026 September 18–20, 2026 Harlem, New York Presented by Harlem Stage. Learn more about NYBALF and explore the 2026 archive: https://blackandafricanlitfestny.com Follow NYBALF: Instagram / X: @nyblackaflitfest ABOUT NYBALF The New York Black & African Literature Festival is a Harlem-based literary platform connecting writers, poets, thinkers, artists and readers across Africa and the global Black diaspora. Through conversations, performances, readings, workshops and public gatherings, NYBALF creates space for Black literary traditions to meet across languages, geographies and histories without being reduced to a single story. Its work continues beyond the annual festival through an expanding archive of conversations, performances, books and ideas. Filmed at Harlem Stage, The Gatehouse. © 2026 New York Black & African Literature Festival. #NYBALF2026 #NamwaliSerpell #ToniMorrison #BlackLiterature #HarlemStage