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Born on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue and richly detailed black characters. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved. Morrison has won nearly every book prize possible. She has also been awarded honorary degrees.

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Early Life and Education

Born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison was the second oldest of four children. Her father, George Wofford, worked primarily as a welder but held several jobs at once to support the family. Her mother, Ramah, was a domestic worker. Morrison later credited her parents with instilling in her a love of reading, music and folklore along with clarity and perspective.

Living in an integrated neighborhood, Morrison did not become fully aware of racial divisions until she was in her teens. "When I was in first grade, nobody thought I was inferior. I was the only Black in the class and the only child who could read," she later told a reporter from The New York Times. Dedicated to her studies, Morrison took Latin in school and read many great works of European literature. She graduated from Lorain High School with honors in 1949.

At Howard University, Morrison continued to pursue her interest in literature. She majored in English and chose the classics for her minor. After graduating from Howard in 1953, Morrison continued her education at Cornell University. She wrote her thesis on the works of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner and completed her master's degree in 1955. She then moved to the Lone Star State to teach at Texas Southern University.

Life as a Mother and Random House Editor

In 1957, Morrison returned to Howard University to teach English. There she met Harold Morrison, an architect originally from Jamaica. The couple married in 1958 and welcomed their first child, Harold, in 1961. After the birth of her son, Morrison joined a writers group that met on campus. She began working on her first novel with the group, which started out as a short story.

Morrison decided to leave Howard in 1963. After spending the summer traveling with her family in Europe, she returned to the United States with her son. Her husband, however, had decided to move back to Jamaica. At the time, Morrison was pregnant with their second child. She moved back home to live with her family in Ohio before the birth of son Slade in 1964. The following year, she moved with her sons to Syracuse, New York, where she worked for a textbook publisher as a senior editor. Morrison later went to work for Random House, where she edited works by Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones, renowned for their literary fiction, as well as luminaries like Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali.

Books

'The Bluest Eye'

Morrison's first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. She used it as her literary first name "Toni," based on a nickname derived from St. Anthony after she'd joined the Catholic Church. The book follows a young African American girl, Pecola Breedlove, who believes her incredibly difficult life would be better if only she had blue eyes. The controversial book didn't sell well, with Morrison stating in a 1994 afterword that the reception to the work was parallel to how her main character was treated by the world: "dismissed, trivialized, misread."

'Sula'

Morrison nonetheless continued to explore the African American experience in its many forms and eras in her work. Her next novel, Sula (1973), explores good and evil through the friendship of two women who grew up together in Ohio. Sula was nominated for the American Book Award.

'Song of Solomon'

Song of Solomon (1977) became the first work by an African American author to be a featured selection in the Book of the Month club since Native Son by Richard Wright. The lyrical story follows the journey of Milkman Dead, a Midwestern urban denizen who attempts to make sense of family roots and the often harsh realities of his world. Morrison received a number of accolades for the novel, which would go on to win the National Book Critics Circle Award and become a perennial favorite among academics and general readers.

Pulitzer for 'Beloved'

A rising literary star, Morrison was appointed to the National Council on the Arts in 1980. The following year, Tar Baby was published. The Caribbean-based novel drew some inspiration from folktales and received a decidedly mixed reaction from critics. Her next work, however, proved to be one of her greatest masterpieces. Beloved (1987) explores love and the supernatural. Inspired by real-world figure Margaret Garner, main character Sethe, a former enslaved person, is haunted by her decision to kill her children rather than see them become enslaved. Three of her children survived, but her infant daughter died at her hand. Yet Sethe's daughter returns as a living entity who becomes an unrelenting presence in her home. For this spellbinding work, Morrison won several literary awards, including the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Ten years later, the book was turned into a movie starring Oprah Winfrey, Thandie Newton and Danny Glover.

Nobel Prize

Morrison became a professor at Princeton University in 1989 and continued to produce great works, including Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992). In recognition of her contributions to her field, she received the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, making her the first African American woman to be selected for the award. The following year, she published the novel Jazz, which explores marital love and betrayal in 20th-century Harlem.

At Princeton, Morrison established a special workshop for writers and performers known as the Princeton Atelier in 1994. The program was designed to help students create original works in a variety of artistic fields.

More Books

'Paradise'

Outside of her academic work, Morrison continued to write new works of fiction. Her next novel, Paradise (1998), which focuses on a fictional African American town called Ruby, earned mixed reviews.

Children's Books

In 1999, Morrison branched out to children's literature. She worked with her artist son Slade on The Big Box (1999), The Book of Mean People (2002), The Ant or the Grasshopper? (2003) and Little Cloud and Lady Wind (2010). She has also explored other genres, writing the play Dreaming Emmett in the mid-1980s and the lyrics for "Four Songs" with composer Andre Previn in 1994 and "Sweet Talk" with composer Richard Danielpour in 1997. And in 2000, The Bluest Eye, which initially had modest sales, became a literary blockbuster upon being chosen as the Oprah Book Club pick, going on to sell hundreds of thousands of copies.

'Love'

Her next novel, Love (2003), divides its narrative between the past and present. Bill Cosey, a wealthy entrepreneur and owner of the Cosey Hotel and Resort, is the center figure in the work. The flashbacks explore his community life and flawed relationships with women, with his death casting a long shadow on the present. A critic for Publisher's Weekly praised the book, stating that "Morrison has crafted a gorgeous, stately novel whose mysteries are gradually unearthed."

Writing a Libretto

In 2006, Morrison announced she was retiring from her post at Princeton. That year, The New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best novel of the past 25 years. She continued to explore new art forms, writing the libretto for Margaret Garner, an American opera that explores the tragedy of slavery through the true life story of one woman's experiences. The work debuted at the New York City Opera in 2007.

Morrison traveled back to the early days of colonialism in America for A Mercy (2008), a book that some have construed as a page-turner in its unfolding. Once again, a woman who is both an enslaved and a mother must make a terrible choice regarding her child, who becomes part of an expanding homestead. As a critic from the Washington Post described it, the novel is "a fusion of mystery, history and longing," with the New York Times singling out the work as one of the 10 Best Books of the year.

Nonfiction Books

In addition to her many novels, Morrison has crafted nonfiction as well. She published a collection of her essays, reviews and speeches, What Moves at the Margin, in 2008.

A champion for the arts, Morrison spoke out about censorship in October 2009 after one of her books was banned at a Michigan high school. She served as editor for Burn This Book, a collection of essays on censorship and the power of the written word, which was published that same year. She told a crowd gathered for the launch of the Free Speech Leadership Council about the importance of fighting censorship. "The thought that leads me to contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people, outlawed languages flourishing underground, essayists' questions challenging authority never being posed, unstaged plays, canceled films-that thought is a nightmare. As though a whole universe is being described in invisible ink," Morrison said.

In 2017 the author released The Origin of Others - an exploration on race, fear, mass migration and borders - based on her Norton lectures at Harvard.

Late Career Books

'Home'

Morrison continued to be one of literature's great storytellers through her 80s. She published the novel Home in 2012, exploring a period of American history once again-this time, the post-Korean War era. "I was trying to take the scab off the '50s, the general idea of it as very comfortable, happy, nostalgic. Mad Men. Oh, please," she said to the Guardian in reference to choosing the setting. "There was a horrible war you didn't call a war, where 58,000 people died. There was McCarthy." Her main character, Frank, is a veteran who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that adversely affects his relationships and ability to function in the world.

While writing the novel, Morrison experienced a great personal loss. Her son Slade died of pancreatic cancer in December 2010.

Around the time that Home was published, Morrison also debuted another work: She worked with opera director Peter Sellars and songwriter Rokia Traoré on a new production inspired by William Shakespeare's Othello. The trio focused on the relationship between Othello's wife Desdemona and her African nurse, Barbary, in Desdemona, which premiered in London in the summer of 2012. That same year Morrison received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama.

'God Help the Child'

In 2015, Morrison published God Help the Child, a layered novella focusing on the experiences of the character Bride - a young, dark-skinned Black woman who works in the cosmetics industry while reckoning with the rejections of her past. That same year the BBC aired the documentary T oni Morrison Remembers. In autumn 2016, she received the Pen/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction.

Death

Morrison died on August 5, 2019, at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.

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Born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison was the second oldest of four children. Her father, George Wofford, worked primarily as a welder but held several jobs at once to support the family. Her mother, Ramah, was a domestic worker.

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Her eight major novels, The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise and Love have received extensive critical acclaim. She received the National Book Critics Award in 1978 for Song of Solomon and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Beloved.

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Morrison's writings concentrate on rural Afro-American communities and on their cultural inheritance, which she explores with cold-blooded detail and vivid vocabulary.

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The Life of Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain, Ohio after her parents moved to the North to escape the problems of southern racism. On both sides of her family were migrants and sharecroppers. She spent her childhood in the Midwest and read avidly, from Jane Austen to Tolstoy. Morrison's father, George, was a welder, and told her folktales of the black community, transferring his African-American heritage to her generation. In 1949 she entered Howard University in Washington, D.C. one of America's most distinguished black college. Morrison continued her studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York where she received her M.A. in 1955.

During 1955-57 Morrison was an instructor in English at Texas Southern University, at Houston, and taught in the English department at Howard. She married Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect, in 1958. Together they had two children, Harold Ford and Slade Kevin. After 6 years of marriage she divorced Harold in 1964. While working and caring for her children, Morrison wrote her first novel, The Bluest Eyes, which appeared in 1970. She continued to write novels and later Morrison was appointed the position Robert F. Goheen Professor of the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University in the spring of 1989, becoming the first black woman ever to hold a chair at an Ivy League school. Morrison now continues to teach fiction and live in Princeton, New Jersey.

Awards and Novels

In 1970 Morrison's literary career began when The Bluest Eye was published. Set in Morrison's hometown, the novel received critical acclaim but failed to attract the public's interest. Sula, Morrison's second novel, was published in 1973, and because of her insightful portrayal of the African-American lifestyle; Sula was nominated for National Book Award and received the Ohioana Book Award. Her next novel, Song of Solomon(1977), was a paper back best seller. Its homage to the richness of the black cultural heritage helped Morrison win two more awards: National Book Critics Circle Award and American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award. Later, in 1987 Morrison published Beloved. The novel illustrated the horrifying lives of slaves and how one ex-slave's past haunts her. The novel received international success and was honored with the Pulitzer Prize. Beloved also won other awards including New York State Governor's Arts Award, First recipient of the Washington College Literary award, National Book Award nomination and National Book Critics Circle Award nomination.

In 1993, Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature as an author "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality". She became the eighth woman and the first African-American to win the prize. After hearing the news from a colleague at Princeton University she was happy and honored by her achievement. She further explained, "What is most wonderful for me, personally, is to know that the Prize at last has been awarded to an African-American. Winning as an American is very special-but winning as a Black American is a knockout." After receiving the highest honor in literature, Morrison continued her success and reentered the best sellers list with the publication of Paradise and later wrote with her son The Big Box.

Morrison's Writing Style

Morrison's writings concentrate on rural Afro-American communities and on their cultural inheritance, which she explores with cold-blooded detail and vivid vocabulary. Her intricate writing style does not just tell the reader about issues concerning African-Americans instead she shows them. In Beloved, set in Ohio and a plantation in Kentucky, Morrison shows slavery through flashbacks and stories told by characters. Her word choices give the reader the sense on how slave masters viewed their slaves as savage animals. Her work is described as breath taking, leaving Beloved more then a story; it is a history, and it is a life of its own.

Also growing up in Ohio gives Morrison a distinction as writer. Morrison places the setting in some of her novels there. Morrison explained "I am from the Midwest so I have a special affection for it. My beginnings are always there (Ohio) ... No matter what I write, I begin there ... Ohio also offers an escape from stereotyped black settings. It is neither plantation nor ghetto."

"Vivid dialogue, capturing the drama and extravagance of black speech, gives way to an impressionistic evocation of physical pain or an ironic, essay-like analysis of the varieties of religious hypocrisy" -- Margo Jefferson (Newsweek).

"Toni Morrison is an important novelist who continues to develop her talent. Part of her appeal, of course, lies in her extraordinary ability to create beautiful language and striking characters. However, Morrison's most important gift, the one which gives her a major author's universality, is the insight with which she writes of problems all humans face.... At the core of all her novels is a penetrating view of the unyielding, heartbreaking dilemmas which torment people of all races" -- Elizabeth B. House ( Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook).

"(Morrison) works her magic charm above all with a love of language. Her ... style carries you like a river, sweeping doubt and disbelief away, and it is only gradually that one realizes her deadly serious intent" -- Susan Lydon ( Village Voice).

Morrison and Race

Through out Morrison's novel she does not use whites for main characters. Often she is criticize for this. She explains her choice of characters by" I look very hard for black fiction because I want to participate in developing a canon of black work. We've had the first rush of black entertainment, where blacks were writing for whites, and whites were encouraging this kind of self-flagellation. Now we can get down to the craft of writing, where black people are talking to black people." Furthermore, she stated "the Black narrative has always been understood to be a confrontation with some White people. I'm sure there are many of them. They're not terribly interesting to me. What is interesting to me is what is going on within the community. And within the community, there are no major White players. Once I thought, 'What is life like if they weren't there?' Which is they way I- we lived it, the way I lived it."

Morrison's upbringing has additionally contributed to her character choice, themes in her novel and how she views white people. Her father was the main contributor towards her outlook on whites. Morrison has described her father's racist attitude towards whites and events in her childhood in interviews. When she was two years old her family's home was set on fire while they were in it. "People set our house on fire to evict us..." said Morrison. Her father became even more upset with whites after the incident. "He simply felt that he was better and superior to all white people" explained Morrison. When she was asked if she felt the same way that her father felt she responded "No, I don't feel quite the same way as he did. With very few exceptions, I feel that White people will betray me: that in the final analysis, they'll give me up."

More Toni Morrison
Additional resources about Toni Morrison, including a complete list of works, speeches, and conversations can be found here.

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The Life of Toni Morrison Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain, Ohio after her parents moved to the North to escape the problems of southern racism. On both sides of her family were migrants and sharecroppers. She spent her childhood in the Midwest and read avidly, from Jane Austen to Tolstoy.

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The Toni Morrison Society, founded in 1993, became an official member of the American Literature Association.

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Read CNN Fast Facts about the life of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison.

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She Wrote the libretto for "Margaret Garner," which premiered in 2005.

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Read CNN Fast Facts about the life of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison.

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She was the first African-American woman to win a Nobel prize in literature.

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Read CNN Fast Facts about the life of Pulitzer and Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison.

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(1931-    )