“Certain kinds of trauma visited on peoples are so deep, so cruel, that ... only writers can translate such trauma and turn sorrow into meaning, sharpening the moral imagination." That's writer Toni Morrison, speaking in an interview with Fran Liebowitz at the June 3, 2009, New York launch of National Coalition Against Cenorship's Free Speech Leadership Council. Morrison, a much honored fiction writer, is editor of the newly published "Burn this Book," a collection of essays on censorship. Her own books have been challenged in dozens of U.S. schools and banned from classrooms and libraries for being obscene and “harmful to minors.” Says Morrison: "A writer’s life and work are not a gift to mankind. They are its necessity.” See the story on the NCAC, with links to much more on Morrison and the Council. See the Morrison interview on CANtv. [LINK] Posted by Linda Frye Burnham