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BIO
Author
of seven bestselling, critically acclaimed novels, Toni Morrison
was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature. She
also received the Pulitzer Prize in 1998 for BELOVED and the 1978
National Book Critics Circle Award for SONG OF SOLOMON. Her
most recent novel, PARADISE, was an Oprah book club selection in
January 1998.
BELOVED is now a major motion picture directed by Jonathan Demme,
starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover.
Morrison is currently teaching writing and English at Princeton
University.
-- Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18,
1931.
-- She is the second of four children and the daughter of George
Wofford and Rhaman Willis Wofford.
-- Morrison was raised in Loraine, a town in northern Ohio near
Lake Erie.
-- Her early favorites: Tolstoy, Dostoyevski, Flaubert, and Jane
Austen.
-- Morrison graduated Loraine High School in 1949.
-- In 1953, Morrison graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English
(minored in classics), from Howard University.
-- She received her Master of Arts from Cornell University in 1955.
-- In 1957, she began teaching at Howard.
-- Morrison has taught at Yale University, Bard College, Rutgers
University.
-- In 1958 married she Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect. They
divorced in 1964.
-- In 1967, she became senior editor at Random House.
-- Her first novel, THE BLUEST EYE, was published in 1970.
-- In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer prize for fiction for BELOVED.
-- She won the Nobel Prize for literature (first black woman to
win this award) in 1993.
-- Morrison has two children: Harold Ford and Slade Kevin.
(c) Copyright 1999, The Book Report, Inc. All rights reserved.
ARTICLE
The
mere mention of the name Toni Morrison evokes an indescribable sense
of awe in me. At first, I didn't understand this feeling. Why
do her books, even from the feel of the physical objects themselves,
seem to carry a nearly imperceptible extra weight? Why
do her books stare at me from across the room, begging me to pull
them from the shelf and crawl inside? And why do I feel
that I am in the knowing hands of a master when introduced to her
complex characters? I can never hope to fully know the
answers to these questions, but upon spending some time immersed
in her fiction I have come to understand that the feeling I have
is part of any reader's relationship with a great writer.
Toni Morrison has the rare power to command energy from each word. The
poetic economy and raw emotion that would win her acclaim from both
critics and audiences is evident in her first novel, THE BLUEST
EYE. Morrison was already exploring the difficult themes
of discovering love, survival and remaining whole in a fragmented
and destructive world.
With a passionate first novel behind her, it isn't much of a surprise
that Morrison was able to follow with an even deeper, richer view
of life. In SULA, her characters again bloom into a fertile
literary world, each layer believable and real. Like
many of the great novels of the 20th century, SULA has the ability
to be playful as well as difficult, showing the two necessary extremes
of modern life. It is through fresh, lively prose that
Morrison allows a lightness to enter the novel, while the timeless
themes of friendship, love and separation endear the reader to the
characters.
Everyone who reads Toni Morrison will eventually choose a favorite. It
is a difficult choice because although her beautiful prose runs
through each novel, their characters and geography define them. For
me, the One is SONG OF SOLOMON. Finding myself beyond
the realm of articulation again, I can only hope to express the
joy of reading this book. SONG OF SOLOMON has mystery, it has adventure,
it borrows from the Bible, and it tastes like a poem. Upon
finishing it for the first time, I even thought that it was perfect
(a thought I only question because I question the word behind it). From
the vivid colors in the first scene, so wonderfully descriptive
it plays like a staged performance in your head, until the cryptic
ending, SONG OF SOLOMON takes you in completely. The
hero, Milkman Dead, is one of the more beautiful and tragic characters
to be conceived in modern literature. Morrison allows
us a glimpse of his family, his past and his terrifying memories. And
we watch as he discovers himself and his place in history through
the course of her novel.
Many people will disagree and say that BELOVED is Toni Morrison's
greatest novel. Considering the level of storytelling, it seems
to me a matter of taste. (As I said, SONG OF SOLOMON
struck me like a tidal wave, and there is little I can do to explain
it). Set in rural Ohio several years after the Civil
War, BELOVED explores more than the ugly face of slavery; it enters
the interior life of those living during that time. Heralded
by some as the greatest fiction to emerge from the 1980s, BELOVED
earned Morrison the Pulitzer Prize in 1988; it also propelled her
into the elite category of authors who have created not only numerous
novels, but novels that play an important part in the progression
of literature. She had become one of the most important
writers of the 20th century.
Toni Morrison received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993, becoming
the first African-American woman to win the award. Often
compared to another Author of the Century, William Faulkner, Morrison
has earned herself a permanent place among those rare individuals
who change the world with their words, touch lives with their gift,
and raise the bar for those who follow.
--- Thomas King
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