Face of Nation : Internationally acclaimed author Toni Morrison, whose prose spoke to the pain and resiliency in the African American experience, has died, her family and her publisher announced Tuesday.Morrison died Monday night at the Montefiore Medical Center in New York.
She was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature, the first African American woman to be so honored. Judges hailed her as one “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”
She was also bestowed America’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2012. Her novels included “Beloved,” “The Bluest Eye,” “Sula,” “Song of Solomon,” “Tar Baby,” “Jazz,” “Paradise,” “Gold Help the Child,” “Home,” “A Mercy” and “Love.”
“Morrison’s novels were celebrated and embraced by booksellers, critics, educators, readers and librarians,” Morrison’s publisher said Tuesday. “Her work also ignited controversy, notably in school districts that tried to ban her books. Few American writers won more awards for their books and writing.”
In a statement released by Princeton University, where she taught, the author’s family called her “our adored mother and grandmother.” “She was an extremely devoted mother, grandmother, and aunt who reveled in being with her family and friends,” the statement said.
Writer and television producer Shonda Rhimes said Tuesday that Morrison was her inspiration. “She made me understand `writer’ was a fine profession. I grew up wanting to be only her,” Rhimes tweeted, minutes after Morrison’s passing was announced. “Dinner with her was a night I will never forget. Rest, Queen.”
U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., tweeted one of Morrison’s most famous quotes: “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” Morrison was born Chloe Ardelia Wofford on Feb. 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, the second of four children to a welder father and a domestic-worker mother.
In her speech upon winning the Nobel, Morrison said, “Narrative has never been merely entertainment for me. It is, I believe, one of the principal ways in which we absorb knowledge.” Among other honors, Morrison won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for “Beloved,” a novel about a freed slave and the ghost of her slain daughter who returns to haunt and obsess her. The overarching, psychological torture of slavery was a persistent theme in many of Morrison’s works.
