Toni Morrison Biography

Toni Morrison was a Pulitzer and Nobel prize-winning author from America who lived from 1931 to 2019. Among her notable works, we have Song of Solomon, A Mercy, Beloved, and The Bluest Eye. Apart from being an author, Toni Morrison was also a professor by profession and an editor. A few other notable books written by her include Love, Jazz, and Sula. In 2012, she received the Presidential medal of freedom honor along with various other honorable degrees, and possessed a huge collection of book-world accolades.

Her specialty was in keeping detailed and analyzable American African characters as the central protagonists of her narratives. The flow of her stories was beautiful, with exquisite language and great impactful themes. The general idea of her novels was the main key to move and shake people’s inner core.

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Toni Morrison Education And Childhood

Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio, on 18th February 1931 as Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison to George Wofford and Ramah. She had three other siblings and belonged to a black working-class family. Born in Greenville, Alabama, her mother moved to the north as a child with her family. Her father lived in Cartersville, Georgia, but to escape racism and secure a sustainable income source, George Wofford shifted to Ohio, where he did odd jobs such as street welding. Her mother was a housewife, but due to racism, they hated whites so much that they wouldn’t even allow white people in their house.

Now let’s discuss more Toni Morrison's education and the three universities from where Morrison received her education. In 1949, she graduated from the Loraine High School with an honors degree, where she was a part of the yearbook staff, debate, and drama teams. She loved reading Leo Tolstoy and Jane Austen as a child and thanked her family for instilling cultural heritage with a love for language by singing her African American folktales, songs, ghost stories, and more. In 1953, she received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Howard University, Washington DC, followed by an M.A in English from Cornell University in 1955. She loved reading great European classics and took Latin back in school.

Early Years As An Editor And A Mother

The thesis written by Toni Morrison on the works of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf is even famous, which helped her complete the master’s degree. For two years, she continued to teach at Texas Southern University, after which she returned to Howard University and taught English for seven years from 1957. In 1958, she got married to Harold Morrison, originally a Jamaican architect. After the birth of her first child in 1961, Morrison was associated with a writer’s group and started framing her first novel, which she thought would be a short story.

In 1963, she decided to leave Howard and traveled Europe extensively along with her family and then returned to the US with her son. But in 1964, her husband decided to return to Jamaica, and they got divorced. She moved back to Ohio, being in a pregnant state with her second son Slade before his birth. To give her sons a better life, she moved to Syracuse, New York, where she worked as a senior editor for a textbook publisher. Morrison had an extensive career as an editor where she edited literary fiction works of Gayl Jones and Toni Cade Bambara along with luminaries like Muhammad Ali and Angela Davis. You can get more information about her editing career from the Toni Morrison Biography.

Notable Works By Morrison

Morrison’s first novel is one of her best-known novels known as The Bluest Eye, which was published in 1970. The book had a controversial theme following the journey of Pecola Breedlove, an African American girl who believed that having blue eyes could give her a better and happier life. It was critically appreciated, but not a best seller as the character was misinterpreted by many. She published her second novel, Sula, three years later, where she portrayed the evil, and good side of friendship between two women brought up in Ohio. For Sula, she was nominated for the American Book Award.

Toni Morrison’s age was 46 when she published Songs of Solomon, which was featured in the Book of the Month club. She even won the National book critics circle award and other book prizes for the same. The storyline following the journey of Milkman Dead, his continuous attempt to make sense of the harsh truths of the world with his family roots, made Morrison one of the favorite authors of general readers and academics.

Morrison’s Greatest Achievements

In 1990, Morrison was appointed to the National Council of Arts as a rising star in the field of literacy when Tar Baby was published. But one of her masterpieces will always be Beloved, published in 1987, a perfect blend of fiction, love, language, and supernatural power. She received the Pulitzer prize in 1988 for fiction and several other literary honors. The book was adapted to a movie ten years later.

In 1989, even after becoming a professor at Princeton University, she never gave up on producing literary masterpieces, including Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and literary imagination in 1992 and Jazz in 1994, which is a combination of betrayal and love set up in the 20th century. She became the first African American woman to be selected for the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993, recognizing her contribution towards literature and fine arts. Morrison founded the Princeton Atelier in Princeton in 1994, which was a specially designed workshop where students, writers, performers were trained in creating original arts in different art and literature fields.

Other Works By Morrison

Her 1998 novel Paradise earned mixed reviews as it was about a fictional American African town called Ruby. The 2003 novel Love was yet another masterpiece that has an underlying mystery throughout that slowly unveils. It has a smooth communication between the past and the present as the main character, Bill Cosey, a wealthy businessman, remembers his past relationship with multiple women and its effect on his present.

Apart from writing fiction, she has also written many children's books along with non-fiction works like The Big Box, The ant or the grasshopper?, What Moves at the Margin: Essay Collection, and more. She has even written a libretto for an American opera known as Margaret Garner. She even wrote a few children's books with her son. By talking of Toni Morrison’s family, all she had was her sons. So, she tried to inculcate her work with her son to spend more time with them.

Conclusion

The contribution of Toni Morrison as a black woman towards African American literature takes us back to the horrific past of America filled with racism. From being a single mother to a discriminated black woman to a literary gem, she is a true inspiration. She died at the age of 88 on 5th August 2019 from chronic pneumonia at a medical center in Bronx, New York City.