Toni Morrison, 'Beloved' author and Nobel Laureate, dies at 88 - August 5th 2019
Toni Morrison
At the age of 33, Toni Morrison found herself back at her parents' home in Ohio, jobless, divorced, and with one child and another on the way. This was a challenging time but also the beginning of a remarkable journey of resilience and determination.
Today, she is one of the most respected American writers, an editor, teacher, and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. She has won the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She is known for her plays "Desdemona" and "Dreaming Emmett" and her movies "A Moment in Time,” "Conversations with Legendary Women,” and "African American Women of Achievement.”
Toni Morrison's writing style is not just about narrating African-American problems and issues, it's about vividly illustrating them. She achieves this without sacrificing the richness of traditional language, a feat that enlightens readers about the depth of her storytelling.
She has written many books, but three stood out: Beloved, The Bluest Eye, and Song of Solomon. Beloved showed us how black Americans repressed and denied the experience of slavery. It was inspired by a true story and is considered her most challenging book, one that some critics say they felt they experienced slavery.
She said in her book: "In hindsight, I think what is important about it is the process by which we construct and deconstruct reality to be able to function in it.”
Morrison's perspective, as expressed in Beloved, resonates with my own. I believe in the transformative power of storytelling. When we write our life stories, we are not just recounting events but reshaping our reality. This act of storytelling empowers us to see how one event can influence another and how our perception of ourselves can evolve.
Click on titles to see these reviews *
