Toni Morrison (1931

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Biography

Chloe Anthony Wofford "Toni" Morrison was an American novelist and editor. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987).

In Their Own Words (5)

Too much tail. All that jewelry weighs it down. Like vanity. Can't nobody fly with all that shit. Wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.

Guitar to Milkman on why a male peacock can't fly much better than a chicken. , 1977

Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty.

The Bluest Eye (1969) First lines , 1969

I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that.

Interview in Newsweek (30 March 1981) , 1981

Writing to me is an advanced and slow form of reading. If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

Morrison said this in her talk at the annual meeting of the Ohio Arts Council in Cincinnati in September 1981. Variants, unsourced: , 1981

You need intelligence, and you need to look. You need a gaze, a wide gaze, penetrating and roving — thats what's useful for art.

Interview with Don Swaim (1987) , 1987

Timeline

The story of Toni Morrison, told in moments.

1931 Birth

Born Chloe Ardelia Wofford in Lorain, Ohio. Second of four children in a working-class Black family. Her father held three jobs at once. Her mother once threw a man down the stairs for using a racial slur in front of her children.

What did your mother throwing a man down the stairs teach you? Was growing up working-class in Lorain your creative foundation? Did your father's three simultaneous jobs model something for you?

1970 Life

Published The Bluest Eye while working full-time as a senior editor at Random House and raising two sons alone after her divorce. She edited books by Angela Davis, Gayl Jones, and Muhammad Ali. Didn't write full-time until she was 55.

How did you write The Bluest Eye while raising two sons alone and editing at Random House? Did editing Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali influence your own writing? Was not writing full-time until 55 frustrating or enriching?

1987 Event

Published Beloved, a novel about a formerly enslaved woman haunted by the ghost of her dead child. Based on the true story of Margaret Garner. Won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988.

What made Margaret Garner's story demand to be told? Is Beloved about slavery or about memory? Did the Pulitzer feel like the world finally catching up?

1993 Event

Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African American woman to receive it. The committee cited her novels' "visionary force." She was 62.

What did 'visionary force' mean coming from the Nobel committee? Was being the first African American woman Nobel laureate a burden or a crown? Did 62 feel like the right age for that recognition?

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