Introducing Toni Morrison

(Above) Toni Morrison

Introducing Toni Morrison

By Marika du Plessis

Recently I read a magnificent novel, titled Beloved. I found out that I just could not put it down! Only a very talented female author could produce such a book, I strongly felt. The author of the book, Tony Morrison, I soon learnt, was actually the first black woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

On the evidence of Beloved, Morrison certainly deserves great awards. I found myself doing more research on this lady and the following background information would be useful to those being introduced to her: (I’m indebted mainly to Wikipedia for the information)

Toni Morrison is one of the greatest black writers the world has ever seen. An American by birth, she was born in Lorain, Ohio, the second of four children in a working-class family. As a child, Morrison read constantly; among her favorite authors were Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy. Morrison's father, George Wofford, a welder by trade, told her numerous folktales of the black community (a method of storytelling that would later work its way into Morrison's writings).

In 1949 Morrison entered Howard University to study English. While there she began going by the nickname of "Toni," which derives from her middle name, Anthony. She received a B.A. in English from Howard in 1953, then earned a Master of Arts degree, also in English, from Cornell University in 1955, for which she wrote a thesis on suicide in the works of William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf.

After graduation, Morrison became an English instructor at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas (from 1955-57) then returned to Howard to teach English. She became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

Morrison began writing fiction as part of an informal group of poets and writers at Howard University who met to discuss their work. She went to one meeting with a short story about a black girl who longed to have blue eyes. The story later evolved into her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), which she wrote while raising two children and teaching at Howard. In 1973 her novel Sula was nominated for the National Book Award. Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention. The book was a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, the first novel by a black writer.

In 1988 Morrison's novel Beloved became a critical success. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Beloved was adapted into a film. The New York Times Book Review named Beloved the best American novel published in the previous twenty five years. In 1993 Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first black woman to win it.

I also learnt that Toni Morrison’s works have impressed and influenced a number of South African black female writers, and even the very young ones like Neo Mvubu. It was also interesting to read the part in one of Pule Lechesa’s books where he writes that when Toni Morrison was announced as winner of the Nobel award for literature, another fellow American asked: “Who is he anyway?” The ‘joke’ being that Morrison was actually a woman and the man was genuinely ignorant about her! I urge South African ladies to try to get hold and read any books written by the eminent Ms Morrison.