“We die. That may be the meaning of life,” Morrison said in her 1993 Nobel Prize lecture. “But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
“We die. That may be the meaning of life,” Morrison said in her 1993 Nobel Prize lecture. “But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
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Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do..!
Toni Morrison’s working life was spent in the service of literature: writing books, reading books, editing books, teaching books.
Morrison was best known for her 1987 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Beloved,” later adapted into a 1998 film starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. In 1993, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, becoming the first black woman to receive the honor.
The Nobel committee honored her career and dedication to centering the lives and histories of African Americans, writing in its citation that Morrison’s work is “characterized by visionary force and poetic import” and “gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”
Morrison was a graduate of Howard University, the historically black university in Washington, D.C., where she later taught while writing her debut novel, 1970′s “The Bluest Eye.” She also held teaching positions at Yale, Bard College, Rutgers and the State University of New York at Albany.
Born Chloe Ardelia Wofford in Lorain, Ohio, on Feb. 18, 1931, Morrison was the second of four children to working-class parents George and Ramah Wofford, who left the South during the Great Migration.
Morrison had two sons, Harold and Slade, with ex-husband Harold Morrison, whom she divorced in 1964.
In 2010, Slade died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 45. Reflecting on her son’s death in a 2012 interview with The Guardian, Morrison rejected the idea of “closure.”
“It’s such an American thing. I want what I got. Memory. And work. And some more ibuprofen,” she said with a laugh.
“We die. That may be the meaning of life,” Morrison said in her 1993 Nobel Prize lecture. “But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
In 2012, then-President Barack Obama awarded her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“I remember reading ‘Song of Solomon’ when I was a kid and not just trying to figure out how to write, but also how to be and how to think,” Obama said, referring to her 1977 novel.
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