Toni Morrison biography
Born On This Day
Happy Birthday! Toni Morrison is 83 today.
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Quick Facts
- NAME: Toni Morrison
- OCCUPATION: Writer
- BIRTH DATE: February 18, 1931 (Age: 83)
- EDUCATION: Howard University, Cornell University, Lorain High School
- PLACE OF BIRTH: Lorain, Ohio
- AKA: Chloe Ardelia Wofford
- AKA: Chloe Wofford
- Full Name: Chloe Anthony Wofford
- AKA: Toni Wofford
- AKA: Toni Morrison
- ZODIAC SIGN: Aquarius
Best Known For
Toni Morrison is a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist. Among her best known novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved.
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Synopsis
Born on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison is
a Nobel Prize- and Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, editor
and professor. Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid
dialogue and richly detailed black characters. Among her best known
novels are The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved. Morrison has won nearly every book prize possible. She has also been awarded honorary degrees.
Contents
Quotes
"The ability of writers to imagine what is not the self, to
familiarize the strange and mystify the familiar, is the test of their
power."
– Toni Morrison
Early Career
Born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio, Toni Morrison was the second oldest of four children. Her father, George Wofford, worked primarily as a welder, but held several jobs at once to support the family. Her mother, Ramah, was a domestic worker. Morrison later credited her parents with instilling in her a love of reading, music, and folklore.Living in an integrated neighborhood, Morrison did not become fully aware of racial divisions until she was in her teens. "When I was in first grade, nobody thought I was inferior. I was the only black in the class and the only child who could read," she later told a reporter from The New York Times. Dedicated to her studies, Morrison took Latin in school, and read many great works of European literature. She graduated from Lorain High School with honors in 1949.
At Howard University, Morrison continued to pursue her interest in literature. She majored in English, and chose the classics for her minor. After graduating from Howard in 1953, Morrison continued her education at Cornell University. She wrote her thesis on the works of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner, and completed her master's degree in 1955. She then moved to Texas to teach English at Texas Southern University.
In 1957, Morrison returned to Howard University to teach English. There she met Harold Morrison, an architect originally from Jamaica. The couple got married in 1958 and welcomed their first child, son Harold, in 1961. After the birth of her son, Morrison joined a writers group that met on campus. She began working on her first novel with the group, which started out as a short story.
Morrison decided to leave Howard in 1963. After spending the summer traveling with her family in Europe, she returned to the United States with her son. Her husband, however, had decided to move back to Jamaica. At the time, Morrison was pregnant with their second child. She moved back home to live with her family in Ohio before the birth of son Slade in 1964. The following year, she moved with her sons to Syracuse, New York, where she worked for a textbook publisher as a senior editor. Morrison later went to work for Random House, where she edited works for such authors as Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones.
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