Black History Month Spotlight: Toni Morrison
Author and educator Toni Morrison set the tone for many Black writers of today. Morrison grew up as the second of four children in a working-class African American family in Lorain, Ohio. Her love for reading and her heritage was stimulated by her parents' telling of African-American folktales and ghost stories.
She turned her love for reading into her passion as she received her BA in English from Howard University followed an MA from Cornell University. She taught at Texas Southern University and Howard before getting Random House subsidiary L.W. Singer. While at Random House, Morrison became the first Black female senior editor, giving chances to many upcoming Black writers such as Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe, Toni Cade Bambara, Angela Davis, Huey Newton, and Gayl Jones.
Soon, she began writing herself leading to some of African American literature’s most celebrated works such as The Bluest Eyes, Song of Solomon, and Beloved. Her storytelling and celebration of Black culture set a precedent for African American literature. With Beloved, Morrison became the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. In 1997, she became the second female and first Black fiction writer to grace the cover of Time Magazine.
In her later years, Morrison continued to thrive as a professor at both Cornell and Princeton University. She released her final work of fiction, God Help the Child, in 2015. She passed away on August 5, 2019, after a battle with pneumonia.
Some may not acknowledge this fact, but Toni Morrison is basically the turning point for African American literature. Her foresight and sense of awareness were able to push Black writers and stories to the mainstream in a way no one before she had even tried. Her contributions as a writer and editor aren’t celebrated enough, but for that, I say thank Ms. Morrison for all you did to create a space for Black voices.
If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.
- Toni Morrison
Originally published at http://adreonpatterson.net on February 4, 2021.