
Reading Toni Morrison’s 1973 Summer Essay “Cooking Out”
Forty-six years ago, Toni Morrison wrote an essay about cooking out for the 1973 Summer Reading issue. By TONI MORRISON Uncle Green was late so that meant all the Blue Gums would be late too. He was up from Alabama for 20 days with a $500 bill which never broke because nobody — nobody — had change and so he had to borrow whatever he needed until the time he could get to a store big enough to handle it. Mama and Aunt Millie looked at his big bill, then at each other, then at t