Black History Month: Toni Morrison

"I always looked upon the acts of racist exclusion, or insult, as pitiable, from the other person. I never absorbed that. I always thought that there was something deficient about such people."
Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison, the first black woman to receive Nobel Prize in Literature

Toni Morrison  (1931- ) 

Toni Morrison is one of the greatest writers of the 20^th and 21^st centuries, known for chronicling the history and experiences of Black America.  She became the first African-American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, and the Swedish Academy described her as a writer “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”

Graffiti of Toni Morrison in the city of Vitoria, in Spain

In an interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth (of KQED’s Online Newshour), Morrison famously said, “All paradises, all utopias are designed by who is not there, by people who are not allowed in.”  Her novel Beloved also won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Below are few of the Books and Plays of Toni Morrison: 

    

Born Chloe Anthony Wofford, in 1931 in Lorain (Ohio), the second of four children in a black working-class family. Displayed an early interest in literature. Studied humanities at Howard and Cornell Universities, followed by an academic career at Texas Southern University, Howard University, Yale, and since 1989, a chair at Princeton University. She has also worked as an editor for Random House, a critic, and given numerous public lectures, specializing in African-American literature. She made her debut as a novelist in 1970, soon gaining the attention of both critics and a wider audience for her epic power, unerring ear for dialogue, and her poetically-charged and richly-expressive depictions of Black America. A member since 1981 of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has been awarded a number of literary distinctions, among them the Pulitzer Prize in 1988.

We Love Toni Morrison...Look out for readings from her book on the Live Radio Drama Telecast via ustream on Merick's Corner coming soon... So who will be next?  remember if you have someone in mind who you think should make the corner list.. let us know... looking forward in hearing from you..