RIP: Toni Morrison (1931-2019)
Toni Morrison, author and Nobel laureate, dies aged 88
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/06/toni-morrison-author-and-pulitzer-winner-dies-aged-88
Toni Morrison, who chronicled the African American experience in fiction over five decades, has died aged 88.
In a statement on Tuesday, her family and publisher Knopf confirmed that the author died in Montefiore Medical Center in New York on Monday night after a short illness.
Describing her as “our adored mother and grandmother”, Morrison’s family said: “Although her passing represents a tremendous loss, we are grateful she had a long, well lived life. While we would like to thank everyone who knew and loved her, personally or through her work, for their support at this difficult time, we ask for privacy as we mourn this loss to our family.”
In 1965, her marriage over after six years, she moved to upstate New York and began working as an editor. It was in Syracuse that she realized the novel she wanted to read didn’t exist, and started writing it herself.
“I had two small children in a small place,” she told the New York Times in 1979, “and I was very lonely. Writing was something for me to do in the evenings, after the children were asleep.”
The book she was missing took Morrison back to Lorain and a conversation she had had at elementary school. Writing in 1993, she remembered how she “got mad” when her friend told her she wanted blue eyes.
“Implicit in her desire was racial self-loathing,” Morrison wrote. “And 20 years later I was still wondering how one learns that. Who told her? Who made her feel that it was better to be a freak than what she was? Who had looked at her and found her so wanting, so small a weight on the beauty scale? The novel pecks away at the gaze that condemned her.”
Toni Morrison, author and Nobel laureate, dies aged 88
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/06/toni-morrison-author-and-pulitzer-winner-dies-aged-88
Toni Morrison, who chronicled the African American experience in fiction over five decades, has died aged 88.
In a statement on Tuesday, her family and publisher Knopf confirmed that the author died in Montefiore Medical Center in New York on Monday night after a short illness.
Describing her as “our adored mother and grandmother”, Morrison’s family said: “Although her passing represents a tremendous loss, we are grateful she had a long, well lived life. While we would like to thank everyone who knew and loved her, personally or through her work, for their support at this difficult time, we ask for privacy as we mourn this loss to our family.”
In 1965, her marriage over after six years, she moved to upstate New York and began working as an editor. It was in Syracuse that she realized the novel she wanted to read didn’t exist, and started writing it herself.
“I had two small children in a small place,” she told the New York Times in 1979, “and I was very lonely. Writing was something for me to do in the evenings, after the children were asleep.”
The book she was missing took Morrison back to Lorain and a conversation she had had at elementary school. Writing in 1993, she remembered how she “got mad” when her friend told her she wanted blue eyes.
“Implicit in her desire was racial self-loathing,” Morrison wrote. “And 20 years later I was still wondering how one learns that. Who told her? Who made her feel that it was better to be a freak than what she was? Who had looked at her and found her so wanting, so small a weight on the beauty scale? The novel pecks away at the gaze that condemned her.”
