英文文學與文化教學資料庫

Toni Morrison 1931-
Her Life Her Works

Her Life
	Born Chloe Ardelia (later Anthony) Wofford, Toni Morrison was one of the four children of George Wofford, who led the whole family from the south to evade racism. Morrison was deeply influenced by the black folklores her father told her and was always so fascinated by the stories in the black community that she later explored further in her works such as Beloved (1987). Morrison was encouraged to read and developed her creativity since she was still very young in the small community at Lorain, Ohio; as a result, her academic performance did not really bring her hardship, for she was received as an undergraduate in Howard University in Washington, D.C., as soon as she finished high school. It was then she changed her name to ÒToni.Ó After graduating from America's most distinguished black college, she continued her master degree in Cornell University and earned a Master of Fine Art degree. Not long after her graduation, she began her teaching and editing career for Random House. She cultivated young writers in Texas Southern University, in Howard University, Syracuse, New York, Yale and Princeton University with funds and edited textbooks and books of black authors, and at the same time, she brought attention with her specialized writing on African AmericanÕs stories. In addition to her well-known writer position, Morrison was also a renown literary critic. Among her numerous awards, this member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters was mostly remembered by Pulitzer Prize in 1987 and Nobel Prize in 1993.

Her Works
	Morrison's works are famous for rich images, poetic narration and impressive depiction of characters and settings of Black American society. While she was busy with her two children after leaving her husband, the Jamaican architect Harold Morrison, she published The Bluest Eye in 1970, which was her debut as a novelist. Though most of her works were written from a female point of views about African American stories with various inspirations from folklores or news that she had learned, she did write from a male perspective once in Song of Solomon, a novel compared with Roots by Alex Haley. Her characters are vivid and full of legends, usually tormented by the haunted past or the history of slavery, passage and life in the plantation. Her recent novel was Love in 2003, a novel that has aroused the public attention toward Morrison's political stance.


References
	http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/people/A0834111.html http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/tmorris.htm http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1993/morrison-bio.html

Prize in 1987 and Nobel Prize in 1993.