Jacqueline Crooks: ‘Toni Morrison’s voice made me want to find my own’
My earliest reading memory
I was eight when I was given The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley, after being moved from my grandmother’s care to live with my mother and her husband, who I barely knew. The story is about leaving one world, adapting to another. Surviving. It gave shape to unnamed feelings and developed my survival imagination: imagining beyond my circumstances.
My favourite book growing up
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I followed David’s journey from exclusion to belonging. Dickens vivifies his characters; you grow alongside them. The novel taught me empathy, and that some relationships sustain us while others must be left behind.
The book that changed me as a teenager
I read Wuthering Heights when I was 12 or 13. Heathcliff fascinates me: enigmatic, brooding, never fully explained. Emily Brontë taught me landscape is character. The moors are a living force, mirroring Cathy and Heathcliff’s emotional lives. That shaped my writing: I’m drawn to unknowable characters and psychologically alive places.
The writer who changed my mind
I was in my 40s when a writing tutor suggested I read The Tempest while writing my story collection The Ice Migration. The island setting, themes of displacement and longing for return resonated, and made me realise Shakespeare could speak to my life.
The author who made me want to be a writer
I can’t remember which Toni Morrison novel affected me most: The Bluest Eye, Tar Baby or Jazz. Her worlds are familiar, dreamlike, grounded yet on the edge of the unknowable. Morrison showed me that Black lives and characters from marginalised worlds are worthy of being centred within literature. Her voice made me want to find my own.
The book or author I came back to
When I first read Wilson Harris, his writing felt demanding. Returning to it in my 40s, I was captivated by his Guyanese landscapes. Harris showed me landscape can carry history, memory, imagination. I learned to value my cultural inheritance and bring Jamaica’s landscapes on to the page.
The book I reread
I first read Irenosen Okojie’s Nudibranch in 2019 and return to it often. She does extraordinary things with language and image; at times, the writing creates its own imaginative vocabulary. It is a masterclass in inventiveness, playfulness and creative courage.
The book I could never read again
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. I studied it at school. I’ve always questioned respectability politics. The world of courtship and dinner parties feels confining. I respect Austen’s skill, but I’m drawn to books about characters who cross boundaries, venture into the unknown rather than finding their place within the social order.
The book I discovered later in life
I discovered Xiaolu Guo’s Radical in 2023. What struck me was its freedom. Guo combines memoir, philosophy, visual art and language, using Chinese script to guide the reader. I admire its fierce independence: a woman stepping outside prescribed roles to pursue creativity on her own terms. Guo isn’t writing to be liked; she is writing to push boundaries.
The book I am currently reading
I’m reading Cosmic Music: The Life, Art and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane by Andy Beta. Coltrane’s music has long been a muse for my writing and influenced my new novel, Sky City. Her music is spiritual, hopeful. As a writer, books about music help me to listen for rhythm and pace.
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My comfort read
There’s something deeply reassuring about returning to Walter Mosley’s Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned. And Socrates Fortlow is so familiar, he feels like family. His resourcefulness, humour and care for others, even in the face of hardship, remind me of people I’ve known throughout my life. I always come away believing that kindness, dignity and transformation are still possible, no matter what is going on in the world.
Reporting from The Guardian contributed to this story.
