DOL of Fame
March 10 2003
 
Toni Morrison
 
Toni Morrison
 
 

Biography:

Born - February 18, 1931
Lorain, Ohio


Achievements:

  • 1953 - Graduates from Howard University with a Bachelor of Arts in English
  • 1955 - Graduates from Cornell University with a Master of Arts degree
  • 1967 - Becomes a senior editor at Random House in New York City
  • 1970 - The Bluest Eye, her first novel, is published
  • 1975 - Sula is nominated for the National Book Award for fiction and receives the Ohioana Book Award.
  • 1977 - Song of Solomon wins the National Book Critics Circle Award and the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award
  • 1977 - Appointed to the National Council on the Arts by President Carter
  • 1984 - Named the Albert Schweitzer Professor of the Humanities by the State University of New York in Albany
  • 1987 - Beloved is published
  • 1987 - Beloved is honored with the New York State Governor's Arts Award, the first Washington College Literary award, a National Book Award nomination, and a National Book Critics Circle Award nomination
  • 1987 - Becomes the first black woman writer to hold a named chair at an Ivy League university, when she is named the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of Humanities at Princeton University
  • 1988 - Pulitzer Prize - Fiction for Beloved
  • 1988 - Receives the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Beloved
  • 1993 - Nobel Prize - Literature

Bibliography:

  • The Bluest Eye (1969) (Oprah Book Club Selection - April 2000)
  • Sula (1973)
  • Song of Solomon (1977) (Oprah Book Club Selection - October 1996)
  • Tar Baby (1981)
  • Dreaming Emmet (a play) (1985)
  • Beloved (1987)
  • Jazz (1992)
  • Paradise (1998) (Oprah Book Club Selection - January 1998)
 

In her own words -- On the importance of women:

"She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind."

"I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and a female person are greater than those of people who are neither.... My world did not shrink because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger."

 
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