Toni Morrison ( Lorain , Ohio , February 18 , 1931 – August 5 , 2019 ) was an American writer, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Biographical summary
Birth
Toni Morrison was born in the town of Lorain, Ohio, to a very poor black family.
Studies
In 1949 , after graduating from the public school in her hometown, she began university studies in English philology and later in humanities, which she took at various centers.
Career
She graduated from Howard University and received her Ph.D. from Cornell. She taught philosophy and literature at Yale University, Howard University, Texas, and the State University of New York . She also taught creative writing at Rutgers University in New Jersey , while working as an editor for Random House, a job she had been doing to pay for her studies. Her editorial work is credited with the discovery of several of the most representative writers of young African-American literature in the United States .
First novel
She was nearly forty when her first novel, The Bluest Eye , was published in 1970. The pun in the title is revealing of the plot of the work (in English, blue is blue and also sad), but it does not prepare the reader for the terrible story that Morrison tells: a black girl, called Pecola, who wishes to have the blue eyes of Shirley Temple or of white girls’ dolls, is raped by her father and ends up going mad.
Toni Morrison was not the first black writer in North America, but she was undoubtedly the founder of a literature written by and for blacks who, like herself, identified themselves as African-American, without concessions, translations or relief for whites or integrated blacks. Her narrative was also genuine and genetically feminine: one of her characters was a woman without a navel, which made her a “first” of the species, perhaps a demiurge and vehicle for the myth and dreams of her people, without ever falling into the temptation of convincing anyone that her differences or her peculiar identity traits imply any kindness or supremacy. Hence perhaps the greatness of her narrative, which exudes the lucidity of a witness and actor of life events that simply occur (whether they are transcendent, marvelous or miserable) without astonishment or heroism. And perhaps this is one of the traits that was evaluated in the awarding of one of the most just Nobel Prizes in the history of this award, which went to her in 1993 .
Personal life
Baptized Chloe Anthony Wofford, she adopted the literary name Toni Morrison, taking the name of her family nickname and the surname of her husband, the architect Harold Morrison, to whom she was married (from 1958 to 1964 ) and with whom she had three children.