They include black folklore elements, such as the supernatural. In "Sula," certain themes emerged that have continued to mark Morrison’s work. Morrison followed with the acclaimed "Sula." The 1973 tale explored the complicated relationship between two black women growing up in The Bottom, a rough area of a Midwestern town. Stark in its pain and anguish, the novel brought forth the suppressed fury and harm wrought by racism. The story revolves around a young black girl named Pecola Breedlove. Raped by her father, Pecola is eventually driven mad by her desire to become like Shirley Temple, the adored white child star. Morrison began writing fiction during her marriage but did not publish her first novel, "The Bluest Eye," until 1970. In 1974, she edited the influential and eclectic "Black Book" which presented a historical scrapbook of African American life. Her authors included Angela Davis, Toni Cade Bambara and Muhammad Ali. From 1965 to 1985, she worked at Random House, where she shepherded many notable books by African Americans into print. Morrison eventually became a book editor in New York City. Morrison returned to teach at Howard (black activist Stokely Carmichael was one of her students). She was pregnant with her second son when her marriage ended in 1964. View Gallery: Toni Morrison: A year without the 'Beloved' author She wrote her thesis on how William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf used the theme of suicide in their work. After high school, Morrison attended Howard, graduating in 1953, and later Cornell, in Ithaca, N.Y., where she received her masters in English literature in 1955. At age 14, Morrison became a fanatical reader inhaling the classics, from Austen to Joyce to Tolstoy. Morrison’s father had no time for white people, “distrusting every word and every gesture of every white man on earth,” she recalled. The future Nobel laureate made extra money doing housework for white families.īut the job that changed her life was helping her older sister at the public library. Ohio, Morrison said, was “neither plantation nor ghetto.” Morrison was the surname of her ex-husband, a Jamaican architect whom she divorced in 1964 after six years of marriage.Ī small Midwestern industrial town on the banks of Lake Erie, Lorain has provided the setting for some of Morrison’s novels. She changed her name to Toni while studying at Howard University in Washington, D.C., because Toni was easier for other people to pronounce. 18, 1931, the daughter of a welder and a homemaker, the second of four children. She often noted in later interviews her regret at not keeping her original name: Chloe Anthony Wofford.
Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio, on Feb. Robert Gottlieb, Morrison’s longtime editor at Knopf, said in a statement: “She was a great woman and a great writer, and I don’t know which I will miss more.” Watch Video: 'Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am' celebrates iconic author
We will share information in the near future about how we will celebrate Toni’s incredible life.”įans, friends mourn: Shonda Rhimes of Toni Morrison: 'Genius has moved on' The family continued: "While we would like to thank everyone who knew and loved her, personally or through her work, for their support at this difficult time, we ask for privacy as we mourn this loss to our family. Although her passing represents a tremendous loss, we are grateful she had a long, well lived life." The Morrison family issued this statement via Morrison's publisher: “It is with profound sadness we share that, following a short illness, our adored mother and grandmother, Toni Morrison, passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends. She was an extremely devoted mother, grandmother and aunt who reveled in being with her family and friends. The consummate writer who treasured the written word, whether her own, her students or others, she read voraciously and was most at home when writing. She died Monday at age 88 in New York following a short illness, according to her family and publisher. But her unique voice – earthy, poetic, powerful, elliptical – endures in novels like "Beloved, "Song of Solomon," "Sula" and "The Bluest Eye." Toni Morrison, the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, is gone. Watch Video: Author Toni Morrison dies at age 88
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