She’s one of the world’s most celebrated authors. Her plays and novels have inspired entire generations of thinkers and writers, and have earned her countless awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama. And as the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, she’s nothing less than an icon in the literary world. But how does her status as a Manifesting Generator inform her life and work?
What is a Manifesting Generator?
In Human Design, manifesting generator types share similarities with both Manifestors and Generators. A Manifestor is someone who catalyzes things to happen—In themselves and within others. A Generator Type is one that literally generates Life Force energy, but needs to have a gut response before engaging with anyone or anything.
The Manifesting Generator integrates both of these qualities. This means that when combined in the right way these qualities can propel the Manifesting Generator through all sorts of truly amazing and fulfilling life experiences. Manifesting Generators love nothing more than being “on” and flying full speed toward their goals, but, to achieve true and lasting satisfaction, they must first listen to their sacral response.
When Morrison was around two years old, her family’s landlord set fire to their house, with them inside, because her parents couldn’t pay the rent. Her family responded with laughter. Instead of giving in to despair and responding from a place of anger, they simply laughed at the ridiculous over-the-top nature of their landlord’s behavior. And as a Manifesting Generator, this might have taught her a valuable lesson. Morrison later said her family’s response demonstrated how to keep your integrity in the face of what she called “monumental crudeness.” It also demonstrated the benefit of checking in with oneself before responding, before acting, and/or inspiring others to act.
Inspiring Others to Follow In Her Wake
It could be said that her entire life’s work has been dedicated to acting and inspiring others to act in a way that is iconoclastic, but always constructive. She revolted against racism and sexism, but she did so by creating something new and beautiful. And she created a platform for countless others to do the same.
One of her first jobs in literature was as an editor for Random House in New York City. Here, she broke boundaries not only because she was the first Black woman senior editor in their fiction department, but because in her role at the publisher she took it upon herself to champion Black writers who otherwise might have been overlooked. She discovered writers and thinkers such as Angela Davis, Huey Newton, and Gayl Jones. And she also brought Muhammad Ali’s autobiography to publication.
The Unstoppable Manifesting Generator
The Manifesting Generator Type is also a powerhouse. People with this personality type are capable of sustaining energy for their projects long past anyone else’s fatigue point. And in the case of Toni Morrison that certainly seems to be true. After publishing her first novel, The Bluest Eye, in 1970, she was off and running, publishing ten more novels, seven children’s books, two plays and eleven works of nonfiction, racking up every award and honorary doctorate you can imagine along the way.
To learn more about the Human Design Manifesting Generator and explore your own Human Design Type, get your Free Human Design Report here.
