Toni Morrison (born
Chloe Ardelia Wofford;
February 18, 1931) is an
American novelist, editor, and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed characters. Among her best known novels are
The Bluest Eye,
Sula,
Song of Solomon and
Beloved. She also was commissioned to write the libretto for a new opera,
Margaret Garner, first performed in
2005. She won the
Pulitzer Prize in
1988 for Beloved and the
Nobel Prize in
1993. On 29 May
2012, she received the
Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Morrison began writing fiction as part of an informal group of poets and writers at
Howard who met to discuss their work. She went to one meeting with a short story about a black girl who longed to have blue eyes. She later developed the story as her first novel, The Bluest Eye (
1970). She wrote it while raising two children and teaching at Howard.[5]
In
1975 her novel Sula (
1973) was nominated for the
National Book Award. Her third novel, Song of Solomon (
1977), brought her national attention. The book was a main selection of the
Book-of-the-Month Club, the first novel by a black writer to be so chosen since
Richard Wright's
Native Son in
1940. It won the
National Book Critics Circle Award.
In
1987 Morrison's novel Beloved became a critical success. When the novel failed to win the National Book Award as well as the National Book Critics Circle Award, 48 black critics and writers[8] protested the omission.[5][9] Shortly afterward, it won the
Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the
American Book Award. That same year, Morrison took a visiting professorship at
Bard College.
Beloved was adapted into the
1998 film of the same name starring
Oprah Winfrey and
Danny Glover. Morrison later used Margaret Garner's life story again in the libretto for a new opera, Margaret Garner, with music by
Richard Danielpour. In May
2006,
The New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best
American novel published in the previous twenty-five years.
In 1993 Morrison was awarded the
Nobel Prize in Literature. Her citation reads: Toni Morrison, "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of
American reality." She is currently the last American to have been awarded the honor. Shortly afterward, a fire destroyed her
Rockland County, New York home.[2][10]
In
1996 the
National Endowment for the Humanities selected Morrison for the
Jefferson Lecture, the
U.S. federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities.[11] Morrison's lecture, entitled "
The Future of
Time: Literature and Diminished
Expectations,"[12] began with the aphorism, "Time, it seems, has no future." She cautioned against the misuse of history to diminish expectations of the future.[13]
Morrison was honored with the 1996
National Book Foundation's
Medal of
Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which is awarded to a writer "who has enriched our literary heritage over a life of service, or a corpus of work."[14]
In
2000, The Bluest Eye was chosen as a selection for
Oprah's Book Club.[15]
In
2002, Morrison was invited to serve as the first
Mentor in Literature in the inaugural cycle of the
Rolex Mentor and
Protégé Arts
Initiative, an international philanthropic programme that pairs masters in their disciplines with emerging talents for a year of one-to-one creative exchange. Out of a very gifted field of candidates, Morrison chose young
Australian novelist Julia Leigh as her protégée.
Although her novels typically concentrate on black women, Morrison does not identify her works as feminist.[16]
She has stated that she thinks "it's off-putting to some readers, who may feel that I'm involved in writing some kind of feminist tract. I don't subscribe to patriarchy, and I don't think it should be substituted with matriarchy. I think it's a question of equitable access, and opening doors to all sorts of things."[16] Critics, however, have referred to her body of work as exemplifying characteristics of "postmodern feminism" by "altering Euro-American dichotomies by rewriting a history written by mainstream historians" and by her usage of shifting narration in Beloved and
Paradise.[17]
In addition to her novels, Morrison has also co-written books for children with her younger son,
Slade Morrison, who worked as a painter and musician. Slade died
on December 22,
2010, aged 45.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toni_Morrison
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- published: 10 May 2013
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