morrison

22Nov

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

Oprah Winfrey, others pay tribute to late author Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison, a Nobel Prize-winning US writer known for her work on race, died in August, aged 88. In offering tribute to Toni Morrison, speakers from Oprah Winfrey to Fran Lebowitz have each shared a very different, but equally special portrait of the late Nobel laureate, who died in August at the age of 88. Angela Davis remembered a dear friend who as a Random House editor helped launch her writing career and would jot down notes for what became the classic Song of Solomon as she cooked eggs for her family. Lebowitz marvelled at Morrison's seemingly photographic memory of the bad reviews she had received. Poet Kevin Young once went to the cinema with her and otherwise proudly sat at her feet. Winfrey spoke of Morrison's majestic, sometimes intimidating pres...

Toni Morrison on the Necessity of Literature

26Aug

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

Toni Morrison on the Necessity of Literature

Reading the celebrated author is a fitting way to mark the 400th anniversary of the first slave ship arriving on U.S. shores. It was a tough week to lose Toni Morrison, one of America’s most esteemed writers and public figures. She died August 5, after a weekend of mass shootings, one clearly motivated by White nationalism. A few days later, ICE arrested 680 people in mass raids on Mississippi factories, an escalation of policies that intentionally inflict trauma on immigrant and refugee families. Those events were enabled by American racism. That racism is a foundational reality of our nation, both in our history and present society, was a theme that Morrison, a Black woman, tackled in her writing for five decades. Her novels focus on the African American experience, depi...

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

Nobel-prize winning author Toni Morrison dies at 88

Morrison, a seminal voice in African-American literature, had 'a long, well-lived life', her family says. Toni Morrison helped raise the United States' multiculturalism to the world stage [File: Francois Durand/Getty Images] Toni Morrison, the first black woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, has died at the age of 88, according to her family. The US author, who was a seminal voice in African-American literature, died on Monday night at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, her family said in a statement. "It is with profound sadness we share that, following a short illness, our adored mother and grandmother, Toni Morrison, passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends," they said. "Although her passing represents a tremendous ...

6Aug

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

The eternal fruit of Toni Morrison’s Iroko tree

Toni Morrison was and forever will be an inspiration for those who seek to set their imagination free. Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison passed away on August 5 at the age of 88 [AP Photo/Kathy Willens] A few hours before I found out that Toni Morrison had passed, I had pulled some of her books off the shelf in search of inspiration for the shape a new project should take. That to me is what Morrison is - a touchstone, a compass and a way of thinking about what kind of place I want to occupy in the world as a human being and as a writer. Like any other writer, I not only bask in her mastery of the English language but also her searing vision of the world and its many defects. It is impossible for me to comprehend stretching my mind into a new projec...

Toni Morrison the Most Enduring Literary Feminine and African American Voice

4Oct

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

Toni Morrison the Most Enduring Literary Feminine and African American Voice

Toni Morrison was born Chloe Ardelia ( Anthony) Wofford on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, where her parents, migrants from the South, had moved to, to escape the problems of southern racism. Morrison is the second of four children, to, Ramah Willis and George Wofford, migrant sharecroppers on both sides, both of whom came from sharecropping families who had moved North in pursuit of better living conditions in the early 1900s. Her father's family, in particular, had faced a great deal of discrimination. Due to these bitter memories and the racial troubles he endured during his childhood, he maintained a strong distrust of whites throughout his lifetime. Morrison's parents instilled in her the value of group loyalty, which they believed was essential to surviving the harsh realitie...