Toni Morrison is a brilliant writer, one adored by both casual readers around the world, as well as critics. Beloved by all for her exceptional story weaving, and praised by critics for “her incisive analyses of the dynamics of race and gender but also for the lyricism of her language and the inventive originality of her plots” (994). Her writing, which focuses mainly on black, midwestern communities, very often provided deep insight on subjects such as racism, discrimination, and interracial relationships, to name a few. These insights are expertly quilted together with Morrison’s gift for storytelling, the seams of her novels holding together a beautiful image, with meaning only that becomes more intricate as you look deeper into it. Truly, she is an influential character in history and literature alike. Unlike some of the women we have studied this term, Morrison’s efforts have been rewarded, as she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. Yet, there is still so much people do not know about her, sadly. Born February 18, 1931 by the name Chloe Anthony Wofford, Morrison was raised in a working class family in the rural town of Lorain, Ohio.
Ohio is bordered by both Kentucky and Canada, which Morrison views as “a crucial boundary between North and South” (994). This boundary provided an excellent site for the author’s analysis of racism mixed with the fight for freedom. After she graduated from Howard University in 1953, Morrison then moved on to Cornell University, earning a master’s degree in 1955 for her thesis studying the themes of suicide, looking specifically to the fiction of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf, two authors who had taken their own lives. She later married Harold Morrison whilst teaching at Howard University. While the two were married, they had two sons, Harold Ford and Slade. The couple separated in 1964, with Toni moving to New York City to become the senior editor of Random House. While working there, she helped influence and shape autobiographies of activist Angela Davis and boxer Muhammad Ali. She also heavily influenced an anthology titled “The Black Book”, an anthology chronicling “the breadth of the ‘anonymous Black man’s’ experience in America.” As of now, she still is teaching at Princeton University.
After becoming Senior Editor of Random House, Morrison published her first book. The Bluest Eye, written in 1970, tells the tale of a young African American girl with a difficult life, who believes having blue eyes would make her life better. Despite the book receiving warm reviews, it did not sell well at the time. Despite this, “Morrison continued to explore the the African-American in its many forms and eras of her work” (Toni Morrison). Her next novel, Sula, was nominated for an American Literature Award just three years later. Many of her novels were heralded for the way Morrison “managed to convey racial pain without losing a sense of joy” (995). She does this, at least partially, by the beautifully crafted characters that often appear throughout her literature. There is often an outlaw character, thought by their community to be “evil”, due to their rebellious and defiant nature. Examples of this in Morrison’s writing are Sula in Sula, or Guitar in Song of Solomon. As previously stated, Morrison received warm reviews for her first novel, The Bluest Eye. The book only received modest attention from the public, but, through that attention, “critics immediately pointed toward Morrison’s skill and talent.” (12) In 1970, a review of The Bluest Eye was published in The New York Times, a company that has a massive amount of customers.
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The review, written by Haskel Frankel was incredibly positive, informing his readers Morrison was “a writer of considerable power and tenderness, someone who can cast back to the living, bleeding heart of childhood and capture it on paper,” and “Given a scene that demands a writer’s best, Miss Morrison responds with control and talent.” (4) This critical praise would subsequently help Morrison write Sula, which garnered even more positive praise. Many people consider Toni Morrison to be a huge literary activist. Through her writings, she encourages positive change by making us accept the struggles of our ancestors so we can move forward; remembering onto the past without holding onto it. She brings to light that the struggles of the black American didn’t end when slavery did. She also brings to light the unique issues that black women face, something that hadn’t been done before. In many ways, Toni Morrison is a revolutionary, helping to usher in a new era of acceptance.
