Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison was an American writer.

She was born on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio. She was the second of four children in a working-class family. From childhood she loved to read; among her favorite authors were Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy. Her father, who worked as a welder, enjoyed telling stories about the lives of African Americans in his spare time.

She studied at Harvard University and Cornell University (1955/1964). She taught at Texas Southern University, and in 1957 returned to Howard University, where she met G. Morrison, an architect from Jamaica, and married him; they had two sons. They divorced in 1964. In the autumn of 1964 she took a position as an assistant editor at a branch of the publishing company Random House in Syracuse, New York, which published educational books. In 1967 she became a senior editor and moved to New York City.

She edited books by prominent African Americans (Muhammad Ali, Andrew Young, Angela Davis, and others), while simultaneously submitting the manuscript of her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), to publishers. Growing out of a story written for a writers’ seminar at Howard University, the novel shows the tragic impact of interracial prejudice on a young Black girl who dreams of blue eyes—the white ideal of beauty. Published in 1970, the novel was warmly received by critics. While continuing to work at Random House, Morrison taught English as an associate professor at the State University of New York in 1971–1972. At the same time she began writing the novel Sula, published in 1972.

The book tells the story of the relationship between two women, one of whom over time accepts the strict moral norms of her closed Black community, while the other rejects them. The novel was included in the Book-of-the-Month Club bestseller list, was nominated for the U.S. National Book Award in 1973, and excerpts from it were published in Redbook magazine. In 1976–1977 Morrison was a visiting lecturer on contract at Yale University, where she worked on the novel Song of Solomon (1977).

The novel is based on the folkloric motif of a spiritual journey. The main character, whose great-grandfather managed to escape slavery, leaves the