Art, literature & culture

Birth of Toni Morrison

18 February 1931

Toni Morrison was born on 18 February 1931 in Lorain. An American novelist, essayist and editor, Toni Morrison was born Chloe Wofford in Lorain, Ohio, and worked as a university teacher and as an editor at Random House, where she championed Black authors. Her novels, which include The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon and Beloved, explore the African American experience, the legacy of slavery and the power of memory in rich, poetic prose. Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, and in 1993 she became the first Black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. She later taught at Princeton University and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. She is widely regarded as one of the great American writers.

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