Review of Miss Chloe: A Memoir of a Literary Friendship with Toni Morrison by A. J. Verdelle

MISS CHLOE, A.J. Verdelle. Amistad, Division of HarperCollins, 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007, 2022, 368 pages, $20.99 cloth, www.harpercollins.com/pages/amistadbooks.

Miss Chloe, a memoir by A.J. Verdelle, is the story of Verdelle’s literary friendship with Toni Morrison. When you open the door to Toni Morrison, the book begins, you look genius in the face. The multiple facets of the phrase open the door are characteristic of the linguistic dexterity Verdelle and Morrison enjoyed. Over two-and-a-half decades, Verdelle literally opened the door to Toni Morrison many times, a surprising development in Verdelle’s life as a young novelist, and her memoir figuratively opens the door on Morrison as a writer, mentor, and friend.

After reading a galley of Verdelle’s novel, The Good Negress, prior to its publication in 1995, Morrison identified Verdelle as a powerful literary voice. She invited Verdelle to visit her in New York. This visit began a long friendship of shared wordplay, home remedies, and wisdom that endured two and a half spats. Always, we were part mystery to each other…. We could rely on each other in certain foundational ways. Black ways. Folk ways. Linguistic ways.

Miss Chloe details the way Morrison’s friendship buoyed Verdelle in her life and work and how it challenged her. Verdelle’s superlatives are not hyperbole. Morrison’s incisive insight, depth of character, honeyed lyricism, and masterminded storytelling are apparent in her writing. Verdelle’s testimony curls around Toni Morrison with veneration that does not diminish Verdelle’s sense of self. Miss Chloe meanders through stories of their meetings, shared meals and conversations, and musings on Morrison’s work and life. Like a dance, the partners separate and come together as Verdelle takes a spin with other cultural icons—Nina Simone, Sonia Sanchez, James Brown, James Baldwin—and returns to Morrison, mapping part of the web of connections in a community of luminous Black artists.

The two writers share an appreciation for the importance of naming, and Verdelle deliberates on the name she will use to address Toni Morrison before choosing “Miss Chloe,” a term that situates their relationship as reverent and familial. With the title Miss Chloe,  Verdelle makes the introduction, opens the door, and invites the reader to approach the venerated Toni Morrison.

The book is divided into two parts: “Do You Know Where Your Wisdom Lives?” and “Call Me Grand.” Each part contains sections separated by spaces and occasional headings. No chapter breaks, no table of contents, no map. Memories spring up wild instead of planted in rows. Details are captivating, aromatic. At times I found myself disoriented among the blooms. The reader can enter anywhere and still be there, contemplating a life, an oeuvre, a friendship.

Verdelle and Morrison learned to read very young, and it shows in the lyricism and impact of their prose. Verdelle’s musicality is evident in sound and structure. She follows a clear statement with lyrical elaboration. My relationship with Morrison lasted a third of my life and was not wholly intimate and not fully professional. Our relationship had its flares and embers, its low heat and occasional blaze.

Verdelle selects verbs like jewelry accenting an outfit: Morrison doesn’t traffic in doubt. Few endeavors jazzed her more…. Sometimes she opens the jewelry box and reveals many at once: I was fixated, positively riveted, charged, and shot aloft by the stacks within.

Miss Chloe is Verdelle’s first published book since The Good Negress in 1995, though she has worked for many years on a novel about Black cowboys. With her literary acuity and Morrison’s support, why hasn’t she published more? [Morrison] did not want to “help me” with my writing, Verdelle writes. She wanted me to deploy my own agency and recognize my range and power. Did a towering literary figure like Morrison, who seems to have been aware of her own stature and skill, expect Verdelle to rise to her standing without the helping hand she had offered Toni Cade Bambara and Angela Davis as their editor? I might have found the expectation crippling. No matter that she welcomed and accepted me, I saw myself as different, and nowhere near to the future she imagined for me.

Verdelle reads cues, trusts her intuition, finds balance, and asserts her artistry, growing in Morrison’s shadow and then in the absence of the shadow. She insists that Miss Chloe is a companion, that Morrison cannot be understood without reading her work. Toni Morrison is an unwieldy subject, and Verdelle does not minimize or attempt to define her massive spirit. Verdelle’s compelling voice spills into the acknowledgments, remarking on Morrison’s current cultural significance. As this book goes to press, Toni Morrison’s books are being banned, her significance being further imprinted; her name is spoken many times, every day. As is fitting, Miss Chloe has gone into ancestry blazing.