'Manifesto' is a story of dreams made real by never giving up

In a 1973 review of Nobel Prize-winning writer Toni Morrison's Sula, New York Times critic Sara Blackburn wrote: "Toni Morrison is far too talented to remain only a marvelous recorder of the black side of provincial American life. If she is to maintain the large and serious audience she deserves, she is going to have to address a riskier contemporary reality."

More than a decade later, in 1988, journalist Jana Wendt asked Morrison if she would ever change and incorporate white lives in her work in substantial way. "You can't understand how powerfully racist that question is, can you?" Morrison responded. "You could never ask a white author, 'When are you going to write about Black people?' Whether he did or not, or she did or not. Even the inquiry comes from