Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison | |
|---|---|
Toni Morrison in 2008 | |
| Born | Chloe Ardelia Wofford February 18, 1931 Lorain, Ohio, U.S. |
| Died | August 5, 2019 (aged 88) The Bronx, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Novelist, writer |
| Genre | American literature |
| Notable works | Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye |
| Notable awards | Presidential Medal of Freedom 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1988 |
| Signature | |
Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019) was an African-American author. She was the second child in her working-class family. In 1993, she became the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.[1]
Toni Morrison was born Chloe Ardelia Wofford,[2] the second of four children from a working-class, Black family, in Lorain, Ohio, to Ramah (née Willis) and George Wofford.[3] In a 2015 interview Morrison said that her father, traumatized by his experiences of racism, hated whites so much he would not let them in the house.[4] She studied at Howard University and at Cornell University.[5]
She normally wrote about racial discrimination (racism, mainly the dislike of blacks).[6] She won awards for writing some books and she changed African-American history. She was perhaps the most successful mainly story-writing African woman in the world.[7]
She was a famous writer and she got her good writing by the people she looked up to. They were B.W.Jones and A.I.Vinson. Her first novel (The Bluest Eyes) is the story of a girl ruined by a racist society and its violence and she had son named slade who she wrote this book with dreaming emmett.[8] One of her books, Beloved, was made into a movie in 1998. This movie starred Oprah Winfrey.
Morrison died at a hospital in The Bronx, New York City on August 5, 2019, from problems caused by pneumonia, aged 88.[5][8][9]
References
- ↑ "Toni Morrison Fast Facts". CNN. Retrieved May 29, 2025.
- ↑ Duvall, John N. (2000). The Identifying Fictions of Toni Morrison: Modernist Authenticity and Postmodern Blackness. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 38. ISBN 978-0312234027.
After all the published biographical information on Morrison agrees that her full name is Chloe Anthony Wofford, so that the adoption of 'Toni' as a substitute for 'Chloe' still honors her given name, if somewhat obliquely. Morrison's middle name, however, was not Anthony; her birth certificate indicates her full name as Chloe Ardelia Wofford, which reveals that Ramah and George Wofford named their daughter for her maternal grandmother, Ardelia Willis.
- ↑ Dreifus, Claudia (September 11, 1994). "Chloe Wofford Talks about Toni Morrison". The New York Times. Retrieved March 24, 2025.
- ↑ "Toni Morrison Remembers". BBC. Summer 2015. Retrieved January 24, 2021.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Fox, Margalit (2019-08-06). "Toni Morrison, 'Beloved' Author and Nobel Laureate, Dies at 88". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-08-06.
- ↑ McDowell, Edwin (January 19, 1988). "48 Black Writers Protest By Praising Morrison". The New York Times. Retrieved August 9, 2019.
- ↑ "'Writers Demand Recognition for Toni Morrison (1988)', June Jordan Houston A. Baker Jr. Statement". July 27, 2012 – via AALBC.com's Discussion Boards.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Italie, Hillel (2019-08-06). "Nobel laureate Toni Morrison dead at 88". AP NEWS. Retrieved 2019-08-06.
- ↑ Lea, Richard; Sian Cain (August 6, 2019). "Toni Morrison, author and Nobel laureate, dies aged 88". The Guardian. Retrieved August 6, 2019.