Toni Morrison
In the mid twentieth century, the Civil Rights Movement influenced African-American writers to express their opinions. Most African-American writers of the time discussed racism in America and social injustice. Some authors sought to teach how the institution of slavery affected those who lived through it and African-Americans who were living at the time. One of these writers was the Toni Morrison, the novelist, who intended to teach people about all aspects of African-American life present and past. In Beloved like all of her novels, Toni Morrison used vivid language, imagery, and realism to reveal the interior life of slavery and its vestiges which remained in African- American life.
Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18,1931 in Lorain, Ohio to George and Ramah Willis Wofford. She was the second of four children. Her parents influenced her writing because of their contrasting views. Her father had a very pessimistic view of hope for his people; however, her mother had a more positive belief that a person, with effort, could rise above African-Americans’ current surroundings (Carmean 1-2). Her parents also influenced her because they were “gifted storytellers who taught their children the value of family history and the vitality of language”(Carmean 2).
Toni Morrison graduated with honors from Lorain High School. She went to Howard University where she majored in English Literature. While at Howard, she changed her name from Chloe to Toni. Toni Morrison went to graduate school at Cornell University. She earned a Bachelor’s degree from Howard and a Master’s degree from Cornell.
Toni Morrison met Harold Morrison, her husband, at Howard University where he was an architect student. Toni Morrison and Harold Morrison later divorced. Though they had two sons. Their first son was Harold Ford. Slade Morrison, their second son, helps Toni Morrison in her writing of children’s books.
Toni Morrison has held many jobs as a writer, teacher, and an editor. As a teacher, she taught general composition and literature classes at Howard University. Some of her students at Howard were Houston Baker and Claude Brown. At Yale University, Toni Morrison taught creative writing and African-American literature. As an editor, she worked as senior editor at Random House in New York City. She worked her way up to that position from...
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...using realism and vivid language. “ Morrison had cast a new perspectives on the nation’s past and even suggests- though makes no promise- that people of strength and courage may be able to achieve a somewhat less destructive future” (Bakerman 173).
Works Cited
Bakerman, Jane S. “Toni Morrison.” American Women Writers. Taryn Benbow-Pfalzgrat. 2nd ed. Vol. 3. Detroit, MI: St. James Press, 2000.172-174.
Carmean, Karen. Toni Morrison’s World of Fiction. Troy, NY: Whitston Publishing Company, 1993. 81-100.
Johnson, Anne Janette. “Toni Morrison.” Black Contemporary Authors; A Selection from Contemporary Authors. Eds. Linda Metzger, et al. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, Inc., 1989.411-416.
Mobley, Marilyn Sanders. “ Toni Morrison.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Eds. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith, and Trudier Harris. New York: Oxford UP, 1997.508-510.
“Toni Morrison.” Literature Resource Center. Feb. 2004. Gale Group. 8 Apr. 2004. http://galenet.galegroup.com
Toni Morrison Uncensored. DVD. Films for the Humanities and Sciences, 2003.
“Works of Toni Morrison.” Big Chalk Library. Jan 1990. Big Chalk. 8 Apr. 2004.http://library.bigchalk.com
Rushdy, Ashraf H.A. "'Rememory': Primal Scenes and Constructions in Toni Morrison's Novels." Contemporary Literature 31.3 (1990): 300-323.
Toni Morrison was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved, a novel whose popularity and worth earned her the Nobel Prize in literature the first ever awarded to a black female author. Born in the small town of Larain, Ohio, in 1931, to George and Ramah Willis Wofford, Morrison's birth name is Chloe Anthony Wofford (Gates and Appiah ix). Morrison describes the actions of her central character in Beloved, as: the ultimate love of a mother; the outrageous claim of a slave. In this statement we find an expression of the general themes of Morrison's mainly naturalistic works. One of these is the burden of the past or history (i.e. slavery and being black in a predominantly white controlled society). Another is the effect on the individual and society from distinctions of race, gender and class. A further theme still is the power of love, be it positive or negative it is a powerful transforming presence in her characters and novels, one through which many find redemption and freedom.
Baldwin, James. “Notes of a Native Son.” 1995. James Baldwin: Collected Essays. Ed. Toni Morrison. New York: Library of America, 1998. 63-84.
Sandra Cisneros was born in Chicago and grew up in Illinois, the only girl in a family of seven. Cisneros is noted for her collection of poems and books that concentrate on the Chicana experience in the United States. In her writing, Cisneros explores and transcends borders of location, ethnicity, gender and language. Cisneros writes in lyrical yet deceptively simple language, she makes the invisible visible by centering on the lives of Chicanas, their relationships with their families, their religion, their art, and their politics. Toni Morrison, born as Chloe Anthony Wofford in Ohio in 1931 changed her name because it was hard for people to pronounce it. She was the second of four children, and both of her parents migrated from the South. Morrison is best noted for her novels, short fiction, being a lecturer, teacher and public servant. She writes using deft language and her lyrical writing, exploring the African-American middle classes and folk culture.
Toni Morrison has been called America's national author and is often compared with great dominant culture authors such as William Faulkner. Morrison's fiction is valued not only for its entertainment, but through her works, she has presented African-Americans a literature in which their own heritage and history a...
Mbalia, Doreatha Drummond, Toni Morrison’s Developing Class Consciousness, (Associated University Presses, Inc. 1991) P. 31.
Wyatt, Jean. “Body to the Word: The Maternal Symbolic in Toni Morrison’s Beloved.” PMLA, Vol. 108, No.3 (May, 1993): 474-488. JSTOR. Web. 27. Oct. 2015.
Christina Crawford is responsible for the book Mommie Dearest, which gave an in depth view into the life of Christina Crawford growing up as Joan Crawford’s daughter. Richard Nixon wrote the book Memoirs of Richard Nixon. And Stephen King debuted in 1979 with his first big name book, The Dead Zone. Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain, Ohio in 1931. Her six major novels--The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Sula, Tar Baby, Beloved, and Jazz--have collected nearly every major literary prize. Ms.
Toni Morrison does not use any words she doesn’t need to. She narrates the story plainly and simply, with just a touch of bleak sadness. Her language has an uncommon power because of this; her matter-of-factness makes her story seem more real. The shocking unexpectedness of the one-sentence anecdotes she includes makes the reader think about what she says. With this unusual style, Morrison’s novel has an enthralling intensity that is found in few other places
Born in San Francisco, in the year of 1916, Shirley Jackson had an inauspicious entrance to the world, despite the chilling nature of her writing. She moved two years after she was born to Burlingame, California, where she resided for most of her childhood. When she was 17, she began to attend the University of Rochester, she only spent a year there, as after a time of questioning her friend’s loyalty and long periods of unhappiness, she left the school for a year, practicing writing almost religiously, with a minimum of one thousand words every day. In 1937, she entered Syracuse University, at first pursuing a degree in journalism before transferring to the English department.
Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, explores the physical, emotional, and spiritual suffering that was brought on by slavery. Several critical works recognize that Morrison incorporates aspects of traditional African religions and to Christianity to depict the anguish slavery placed not only on her characters, but other enslaved African Americans. This review of literature will explore three different scholarly articles that exemplifies how Morrison successfully uses African religions and Christianity to depict the story of how slavery affected the characters’ lives in the novel, even after their emancipation from slavery.
Lubiano, Wahneema. "Morrison, Toni (1931– )." African American Writers. Ed. Valerie Smith. 2nd ed. Vol. 2. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001. 581-597. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.
Toni Morrison, born Chloe Anthony Wofford, is an American novelist, editor, literary critic, and professor. Before her birth, her parents, George and Ramah Wofford, moved to the North to escape the problems of southern racism. Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio as the second of four children. Spending her childhood in the Midwest, she read eagerly from the works of Jane Austen to Tolstoy. Morrison's father was a welder who told her folktales of the black community, transferring his African-American heritage to her, which she transferred to her writings later on. She grew up in an integrated neighborhood but her parents ensured that she was aware of racism and its effects by the time she was a teenager (Leondis).
“As rich in themes and poetic images as her Pulitzer Prize- winning Beloved…. Morrison conjures up hand of slavery on Harlem’s jazz generation. The more you listen, the more you crave to hear.”-Glamour
Toni Morrison born Chloe Walker was born in Lorain, Ohio in 1931. In 1949, after graduating from Lorain high school, Morrison attended Howard University. Where she majored in English and minored in classics, also while attending Howard University Morrison was an active socialite. By 1954 Morrison graduated from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Upon graduation Morrison devoted her time to teaching at prestigious universities such as Yale, Princeton, Howard and Southern University. After her years of teaching Morrison decided to focus her passion on writing. With her literary work Morrison’s works has become a blue print for young black writers