In Memoriam: Toni Morrison, 1931-2019

Submitted by Durham Tech Library on

“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”

On Monday, August 5, 2019, author, editor, and teacher Toni Morrison passed away. 

Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison. Author, editor, teacher. 

Morrison was nearly 40 when her first book, The Bluest Eye, was published. She went on to become the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature(link is external) for her "novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, giv[ing] life to an essential aspect of American reality." She earned the Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award for her novel Beloved and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon. In 2012,  she was presented with Presidential Medal of Freedom. 

Morrison’s writing brought consciousness of the Black experience in America with novels that were both popular and critically acclaimed-- in addition to her literary accolades, she was an Oprah Book Club pick four times. As an editor, she helped develop and edit works by Angela Davis(link is external), Muhammad Ali, Toni Cade Bambara(link is external), Huey Newton, Henry Dumas(link is external), and Gayl Jones. 

If you're interested in reading more of Toni Morrison or experiencing her for the first time, the library has many of her works in our Main and Orange County Campus collections(link is external)

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