Nobel Prize-winning US author Toni Morrison died at the age of 88 at the Montefiore Medical Center Moses Division, New York, United States. Her family released a statement to confirm this news as well.
Her first novel was published in 1970, named ‘The Bluest Eye’. But, the critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977), brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, she won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for Beloved (1987). Her most celebrated work ‘Beloved’, was adapted into a film in 1998, under the same name, starring Oprah Winfrey.
Toni Morrison 🙏🏾 pic.twitter.com/nVjs88kTeg
— Oprah Winfrey (@Oprah) August 6, 2019
Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. The Swedish Academy described her as an author “Who in novels characterised by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”
1993: An exciting, memorable year for all African American Females.#NobelLiteraturePrize #MakingHistory pic.twitter.com/K8UioKZIhR
— Toni Morrison (@ToniMorrrison) October 31, 2013
In 1996, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. federal government’s highest honor for achievement in the humanities. In the same year, she was honoured with the National Book Foundation’s Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Fiction.
In 2012, President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
May 29th, 2012. Earning the Medal of Freedom: a true national, unbelievable honor.#ecstatic #nervous #OBAMA pic.twitter.com/yYG3sX2fyf
— Toni Morrison (@ToniMorrrison) October 31, 2013
Morrison was also the first female African-American editor at Random House, where she had the role from 1967 to 1983. In 2016, she received the PEN/ Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction.
Her most famous line is, “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison has passed away aged 88. She was one of the most powerful and influential literary forces of our time.
Read more: https://t.co/m6oii2oJ3I pic.twitter.com/sfXEIw4VI2
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) August 6, 2019
Author of 11 novels, some of her works are, Sula (1973), Tar Baby (1981), Jazz (1992), Paradise (1997), Love (2003), A Mercy (2008), Home (2012) and God Help the Child (2015).
Famous personalities remembered her, take a look.
“It was not just a privilege to be involved with this great career, it was fun — I like to think for both of us.”https://t.co/JuN9xNmTMY
— Alfred A. Knopf (@AAKnopf) August 7, 2019
Toni Morrison was a national treasure, as good a storyteller, as captivating, in person as she was on the page. Her writing was a beautiful, meaningful challenge to our conscience and our moral imagination. What a gift to breathe the same air as her, if only for a while. pic.twitter.com/JG7Jgu4p9t
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 6, 2019
"I tell my students, ‘When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else."
– Toni Morrison
— Billie Jean King (@BillieJeanKing) August 7, 2019
The world needs voices like Toni Morrison’s today more than ever. Such a loss. https://t.co/S7RdmoMWwg
— Nicola Sturgeon (@NicolaSturgeon) August 6, 2019
Tonight’s front page of the Guardian in print. Toni Morrison 1931-2019 pic.twitter.com/IS20gnJZCb
— Katharine Viner (@KathViner) August 6, 2019
May she rest in peace.
