Toni Morrison was widely regarded as one of the leading lights of US literature and a champion for repressed minorities.
Noted US author and Nobel Prize-winner Toni Morrison passed away at the age of 88. The Morrison family confirmed “with profound sadness” that Morrison had died “following a short illness”.
The author of 11 novels, she won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, having published her first novel, The Bluest Eye, in 1970.
Her 1987 book Beloved told the story of a runaway female slave and was made into a film starring Oprah Winfrey in 1998.
Morrison once said: “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
The Morrison family statement said the “extremely devoted mother, grandmother, and aunt” had “passed away peacefully last night [5 August] surrounded by family and friends”.
Toni Morrison was a national treasure, as good a storyteller, as captivating, in person as she was on the page. Her writing was a beautiful, meaningful challenge to our conscience and our moral imagination. What a gift to breathe the same air as her, if only for a while. pic.twitter.com/JG7Jgu4p9t— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 6, 2019
Toni Morrison’s fiction novels
The Bluest Eye, 1970
Song of Solomon, 1977
Tar Baby, 1981
A Mercy, 2008
God Help the Child, 2015
“They are canonical works, and more importantly, they are books that remain beloved by readers.”
When she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy described her as an author “who in novels characterised by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”
A prolific writer of novels, essays and song lyrics who first came to prominence in the early 1970s, Morrison focused particularly on the experience of women within the black community. Her work earned her numerous awards, most notably the Nobel Prize for Literature, for which she broke new ground as the first African American winner.
Her books The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise and Love also led to Morrison winning the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize – and a global network of admirers including Hilary Clinton, Marlon Brando, Oprah Winfrey and fellow writers Margaret Atwood and AS Byatt.