On August 6, the world was sad to learn of the passing of Toni Morrison, 88; the most decorated African-American novelist, essayist, editor, teacher and professor of our time.
But who is Toni Morrison?
Early years
Born Chloe Ardelia Wofford on February 18 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison published her first novel, The Bluest Eye, in 1970. But it was her third novel, Song of Solomon (published in 1977), that brought her national attention and won her the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Morrison used the monikar Toni (a childhood nickname) and her married name Morrison for her first published novel and it stuck. A decision she later regretted.
Her closest family and friends called her Chloe.
Education and Career
She earned a bachelors in English from Howard University (1953) and a masters from Cornell University (1955). Later Morrison would return to Howard to teach.
She began writing fiction as part of an informal group of poets and writers at Howard University. She attended one meeting with a short story about a black girl who longed to have blue eyes, the story she would later develop as her first novel, The Bluest Eye.
She released her second novel in 1973, Sula then came Song of Solomon in 1977 and Tar Baby in 1981.
During this time, Morrison also worked as an editor at Random House; helping to bring the work of African-American authors to life.
She would leave the publishing world in 1983 to focus primarily on writing and teach.
Her first play, Dreaming Emmett – about the murder by white men of black teenager Emmett Till in 1955 – was performed in 1986 at the State University of New York at Albany, where she was teaching at the time.
She also taught at Rutger’s University and Bard College in the early to mid 80s. She would go on to teach at Princeton in 1989 until her retirement in 2006.
In 1987 Morrison published her most critically acclaimed novel Beloved, inspired by the true story of an enslaved African-American woman, Margaret Garner, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1988.
The book was later turned into a film and released in 1998.
Morrison’s other work included the libretto for an opera based on the Margaret Garner story,Mercy in 2008, the play Desdemona in 2011 and Home in 2012. She also wrote children’s books with son Slade Morrison before his death in 2010 at the age of 45.
During her career that spans over sixty years, Morrison has won over thirty awards and honors for her work, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2012.
Personal Life
During her time at Howard, Morrison met and married Jamaican architect Harold Morrison. The couple had two children together, and would later divorce in 1964.
Political influence and activism
Morrison has also been vocal about injustices against Black and brown people for the entirety of her career and in her work.
In 1998 Morrison compared the impeachment of then president Bill Clinton over his cheating scandal with Monica Lewinsky, to the mistreatment of Black people.
“…this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas,” she wrote.
In 2008 she endorsed presidential hopeful Barack Obama. When he won, becoming the first Black president of the United States, Morrison stated, “I felt very powerfully patriotic when I went to the inauguration of Barack Obama. I felt like a kid.”
In April 2015, she would also speak out against white officers who’d killed three unarmed Black men, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Walter Scott.
“People keep saying, ‘We need to have a conversation about race.’ This is the conversation. I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed teenager in the back. And I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when you ask me, ‘Is it over?’, I will say yes,” she stated.
After the 2016 election where Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton to become the 45th President of the United States, she published an essay, “Mourning for Whiteness.”
She argued that White Americans are too afraid to lose the privileges afforded to them because of their race, which led to the election of Trump, whom she felt was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan.
Legacy
In 2019 the Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am documentary premiere at the Sundance Film Festival. It features Oprah Winfrey, Angela Davis, Walter Mosley and Sonia Sanchez among others.
Related Articles
[Exclusive] Author Teri Woods Talks Domestic Violence & If We’ll Ever Get A “True To The Game” Movie
Author Epiphany Kendell Explains Why “Hood Girls Do It Better…”
