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Winner of The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993
Born Chloe Anthony Wofford, in 1931 in Lorain (Ohio), the second of four children in a black working-class family. Displayed an early interest in literature. Studied humanities at Howardand CornellUniversities, followed by an academic career at Texas Southern University, Howard University, Yale, and since 1989, a chair at Princeton University. She has also worked as an editor for Random House, a critic, and given numerous public lectures, specializing in African-American literature. She made her debut as a novelist in 1970, soon gaining the attention of both critics and a wider audience for her epic power, unerring ear for dialogue, and her poetically-charged and richly-expressive depictions of Black America. A member since 1981 of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has been awarded a number of literary distinctions, among them the Pulitzer Prizein 1988.
Novels
The Bluest Eye. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston 1970
Sula. New York: Knopf 1973
Song of Solomon. New York: Knopf 1977
Tar Baby. New York: Knopf 1981
Beloved. New York: Knopf 1987
Jazz. New York: Knopf 1992
Plays
Dreaming Emmet (performed 1986, but unpublished)
Essays
Playing in the Dark-Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England: Harvard University Press 1992.
Racing Justice, Engendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas and the Others on the Constructing of Social Reality. Ed. and introduction Toni Morrison, Chatto and Windus 1992.
Reference Works
Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation. Ed. by Mari Evans, New York: Anchor Books 1984.
Susan Willis, Specifying: Black Women Writing the American Experience. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1987.
Nellie Mc Kay, Critical Essays on Toni Morrison. Boston: MA (Hall) 1988.
Afro-American Writing Today: An anniversary issue of the Southern Review. Ed. by James Olney, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press 1989.
Terry Otten, The Crime of Innocence in the Fiction of Toni Morrison. Columbia, University of Missouri Press 1991.
Barbara Hill Rigney, The Voices of Toni Morrison, Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1991
Patrick Bryce Bjork, The Novels of Toni Morrison: The Search for Self and Place Within the Community, New York: Lang, 1992
Denise Heinze, The Dilemma of "Double-Consciousness": Toni Morrison's Novels, Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1993
Amanda Louise Gwyn Mason, Return of the Repressed: Forms of Fantasy in the Novels of Toni Morrison, Ann Arbor, Michigan: Univ. Microfilms International, 1993
Conversations with Toni Morrison , Edited by Danielle Taylor-Guthrie, Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1994
Douglas Century,Toni Morrison, New York: Chelsea House, 1994
From Nobel Lectures, Literature 1981-1990, Editor-in-Charge Tore Frngsmyr, Editor Sture Alln, World Scientific Publishing Co., Singapore, 1993
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate. To cite this document, always state the source as shown above.
In the 1949 "Scimitar" high school yearbook is a graduating student named Chloe Wofford, who as Toni Morrison would write such remarkable literary works as Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, and Beloved. One of only 3 African Americans in her graduating class, Ms. Wofford was in the Senate Council, Dramatics, Publications, and was a Class Officer.
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