February is Black History Month, the time of year to celebrate the influence Black figures have had not just on the country but also on the world.
Today, the Edison Public Library recognizes novelist, educator, and social activist Toni Morrison.
Born Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1931, Morrison grew up in a semi-integrated community, but she still felt the constant threat of racial discrimination. She was the first of her family to go to college, the historically black institution Howard University in Washington, D.C. Though she still felt the racial discrimition and segregation in the world around, especially while touring with Howard University’s theatrical group, she made connections with writers and activists who would influence her later work.
Her first book, The Bluest Eye, was published when Morrison was 39 and examined the treatment of the people Morrison called the “disremembered and unaccounted for” with a focus on an abused Black girl named Pecola Breedlove.
Morrison published her best known novel, Beloved, in 1998, which gained her critical acclaim. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and in 1993, Morrison became the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. In 1998, Beloved was adapted to the screen by Oprah Winfrey, who produced and starred in the movie alongside other big-name actors like Danny Glover and Thandiwe Newton.
Her work in literature brought her to the world of academia when Morrison began teaching in the Creative Writing Program at Princeton University. She was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Oxford in 2005, and a year later, Beloved was chosen by the New York Times Book Review at the best work of American fiction published in the previous 25 years.
Morrison passed away in 2019, but her legacy of emotionally charged storytelling that explored the complexities of race, identity, and the enduring legacy of slavery lives on. She left an indelible impact on literature through her commitment to addressing the complexities of the human experience, earning her a place as one of the most influential and revered Black American authors of the 20th and 21st centuries.
