Toni Morrison, named Chloe Anthony Wofford, was born on February 18, 1931. Toni has a rich history and highly valuable academic experiences. Throughout her life, Toni has earned several prestigious awards and has won nearly all possible prizes for her novels. Starting to write as soon as she could read, Toni Morrison has “entered America’s heart.” Toni Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio, a small Midwest city filled with international Europeans immigrants, Mexicans, and Southern Blacks, escaping the racism in the South. Her parents, George and Ramah, raised Toni in a household dominated by religion, and African American music and literature. Ramah’s parents left Alabama after losing their farm due to high debt. George escaped Georgia’s sharecropping …show more content…
Her major was in English with a minor in classics. It was there that she changed her name to Tony because people couldn’t say “Chloe” correctly. She later went to Cornell University and completed her M.A in 1955. At Howard, she had met and fell in love with Harold. Harold was an architect from Jamaica. They soon got married and Toni became pregnant with her first child, Harold, in 1961. She took a teaching position at Texas Southern University where she taught English. There they held a black history week every year. Two years later, she found herself once again in her alma mater. During that time, the civil movement was taking place and many of her students were involved. She joined a writer’s group to escape her deteriorating marriage life; it was there that she came up with the idea of her first novel The Bluest Eye. Soon after, in 1964, the couple divorced while Toni was pregnant with her second son, Slade. She started working for Random House as editor, and eventually onto senior editor, being the only black woman to carry that position in the entire company. During that time, she taught part-time lecturer and continued to write novels. She worked as a writer-in-residence at State University of New York. After 20 years of working at Random House, she became a Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of Humanities at Princeton …show more content…
Her first novel The Bluest Eye, received good reviews from critics although it didn’t sell quite well. Her most famous novels include: Song of Solomon, Sula, and, most famously, Beloved. Sula was nominated to the National Book Award. Song of Solomon won two awards: National Book Critics Circle Award and American Academy of Arts and Letters award. It was also chosen to be the second novel by an African American to be a Book of the Month selection. Beloved was bestseller won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and in part, lead Toni to win the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, making her the 8th black and the first black woman to do so. Beloved was adapted into a film starring Oprah Winfrey in 1998. Aside from winning awards from her works, Toni also won in 1996, a Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters from the National Book Foundation and in 2001, won a National Arts and Humanities Award by the President Bill Clinton. Most recently, she won French Legion of Honour in 2010 and the U.S Presidential Medal of Freedom in
Maya Angelou started out in humble beginnings she was born on April 4, 1928. Maya Angelou's birth name was Marguerite Ann Johnson. Her birth place was St. Louis, Missouri.
Zora Neale Hurston was born in Notasulga Alabama on, January 7, 1891. When she was a little girl her family moved to the now iconic town of Eatonville Florida. She was fifth child of eight of John Hurston and Lucy Ann Hurston. Eatonville was one of the first all-black towns to be established in the United States. Zora’s interest in literature was piqued when a couple of northern teachers, came to Eatonville and gave her books of folklore and fantasy. After her mother died, her father and new stepmother sent her to a boarding school. In 1918 Hurston began her undergraduate studies at Howard...
Toni Cade Bambara, otherwise known as Miltonia Mirkin Cade, was born on March 25, 1939. When she was five years old, she told her mother that she wanted to be called “Toni,” and by the time she finished college, all of her professors called her Toni Cade. She changed her name legally to Toni Cade Bambara in 1970 (Stone, Jennifer). She was born shortly after the Harlem Renaissance, a huge cultural movement that took place in the New York neighborhood of Harlem. This movement was mostly African American (“Biography of Toni Cade Bambara”). This greatly influenced Toni as a child and is why she wrote later in her life (Stone, Jennifer). Her parents also influenced her. Her father would take her to the Apollo Theatre and her mother would take her to The Speakers Corner, which was a political event (“Biography of Toni Cade Bambara”). When she went to the theatre with her father, this inspired her in an artistic way. When she went to the political event with her mother she was inspired to take on and learn more about politics.
Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. In her early years, Angelou was an author, screenwriter, actress, dancer and poet. Her and her brother had a difficult childhood as her parent’s split up when she was young and they were relocated to live with their paternal grandmother in Arkansas. It is in Arkansas where Angelou experienced the true horrors of her childhood. Along with encountering racial prejudices and discrimination, Angelou dealt with feelings of abandonment and rejection, which stemmed from her parents lack of presence in her life. However, the worst of Angelou’s childhood came at age seven, when her mother’s boyfriend raped her. He was later murdered in response to the sexual assault. The assault itself
This novel was released in 1973 during a time which Civil Rights law was passed and Americans started getting exposed the life of African Americans. At the time where more and more people were becoming accepting to the African American community, Tony Morrison and other authors of her era shed more light into the injustice that occurs in our society through their novels. Readers also get to read about what has long been known but not talked about. In an article written in 1974 by Alfred Konph he mentions that Toni Morrison's writing by saying " Morrison yet wrote another excelling book that captures the story of the black community and essence using great literary techniques." She was accepted among those who shared a passion for literature
Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, in 1917. She grew up in a harsh, racist time period along with The Great Depression. Brooks’ poems were influenced from this and encouraged her to write many poems about the life of a black American. “She was inspired by the black power movement and the militancy of such poets as Amiri Baraka” (Barker, 448). During the 1960s her writing underwent a racial change in style and subject matter. Brooks learned to write such great poems at the Associate of Literature and Art, Wilson Junior College, 1936. Writing many known poems such as: A Street in Bronzeville, Annie Allen, Maud Martha, Bronzeville Boys and Girls, The Bean Eaters, etc. She’s a poet of contemporary writings; her poems mirror the ups and the downs of black American lives at this time. Although she writes with great encouragement and wisdom, she looks at everything with an open mind. Her characters speak for themselves. “Her works sometimes resembled a poignant social document, but her poems are works of art…” (Miller, 78). One can picture a vivid idea of Bronzeville, U.S.A. because of the great details she puts into her poems. A black district in her native Chicago, that serves as the setting for many of her poems. “Her characters are usually the unheroic black people who fled the land for the city- only to d...
In the story, “Recitatif,” Toni Morrison uses vague signs and traits to create Roberta and Twyla’s racial identity to show how the characters relationship is shaped by their racial difference. Morrison wants the reader’s to face their racial preconceptions and stereotypical assumptions. Racial identity in “Recitatif,” is most clear through the author’s use of traits that are linked to vague stereotypes, views on racial tension, intelligence, or ones physical appearance. Toni Morrison provides specific social and historical descriptions of the two girls to make readers question the way that stereotypes affect our understanding of a character. The uncertainties about racial identity of the characters causes the reader to become pre-occupied with assigning a race to a specific character based merely upon the associations and stereotypes that the reader creates based on the clues given by Morrison throughout the story. Morrison accomplishes this through the relationship between Twyla and Roberta, the role of Maggie, and questioning race and racial stereotypes of the characters. Throughout the story, Roberta and Twyla meet throughout five distinct moments that shapes their friendship by racial differences.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, eds. Toni Morrison: Critical Perspectives Past and Present. New York: Amistad P, 1993.
Dr. Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis Missouri. Angelou was raised in St. Louis and Stamps, Arkansas. In Stamps she was faced with the brutality of racial discrimination, and a very traumatic incident where she, she was raped by her mother's boyfriend when she was eight, but because of this she also developed an unshakable faith and values of traditional African-American family. (Angelou)This shaped her poetry and her involvement in the arts. Where she began to sing and dance and planned to audition in professional theater but that didn’t work out well because she began working as a nightclub waitress, tangled with drugs and prostitution and danced in a strip club. In 1959, she moved to New York, became friends with prominent Harlem writers, and got involved with the civil rights movement. In 1961, she moved to Egypt with a boyfriend and edited for the Arab Observer. When she returned to the U.S., she began publishing her multivolume autobiography, starting with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as well as several books of poetry and the third being Still I Rise in published in 1978. (Maya Angelou is born) Because of this life of hardship shaped her to who she is and was the inspiration for a lot of her poetry.
Toni Morrison was the first African American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. The novel, Beloved, considered by many to be her best, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988. Beloved, is a novel that reflects upon the History of African American slaves. This novel depicts images of the past, for former slaves in the novel; the past is a burden that they desperately try to forget. However for the protagonist Sethe, memories of slavery are inescapable. Beloved begins in 1873, Cincinnati, Ohio which embodies three generations of slavery, Baby Suggs; the grandmother, Sethe; the mother and Denver; the daughter.
So often, the old adage, "History always repeats itself," rings true due to a failure to truly confront the past, especially when the memory of a period of time sparks profoundly negative emotions ranging from anguish to anger. However, danger lies in failing to recognize history or in the inability to reconcile the mistakes of the past. In her novel, Beloved, Toni Morrison explores the relationship between the past, present and future. Because the horrors of slavery cause so much pain for slaves who endured physical abuse as well as psychological and emotional hardships, former slaves may try to block out the pain, failing to reconcile with their past. However, when Sethe, one of the novel's central characters fails to confront her personal history she still appears plagued by guilt and pain, thus demonstrating its unavoidability. Only when she begins to make steps toward recovery, facing the horrors of her past and reconciling them does she attain any piece of mind. Morrison divides her novel into three parts in order to track and distinguish the three stages of Sethe approach with dealing with her personal history. Through the character development of Sethe, Morrison suggests that in order to live in the present and enjoy the future, it is essential to reconcile the traumas of the past.
In Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, Morrison uses universal themes and characters that anyone can relate to today. Set in the 1800s, Beloved is about the destructive effects of American slavery. Most destructive in the novel, however, is the impact of slavery on the human soul. Morrison’s Beloved highlights how slavery contributes to the destruction of one’s identity by examining the importance of community solidarity, as well as the powers and limits of language during the 1860s.
Marguerite Anne Johnson, better known as Maya Angelou, was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. She was born and raised in an era that involved the Great Depression and World War I. When her parents divorced at a young age, she and her brother were sent to live with her grandmother in a heavily racially segregated Stamps , Arkansas. She found solace in her brother, Bailey, in the hard times produced by the South. This segregation was severe in this era, especially for shy young Marguerite. Throughout her childhood, she was sent from her grandmother to her father and mother. All these different environments exposed Angelou to a series of experiences including: racism, segregation, music, and politics. These experiences were most likely what prompted her to chronicle her life through autobiographical works as well as poems. In these works, Angelou utilizes elements such as literary devices, poetic devices, allusions, recurring themes and symbols to portray
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
Another art that blacks influenced is literature. For example, Richard Wright was one of the first writers to address and protest against the racism problem in America. In his book, Native Son, he shows how a black boy is driven to kill a white woman. He also wrote essays for a book written by former communists who were displeased with the party. Most of his works show the struggles of black Americans. Likewise, novelist Toni Morrison writes about the struggles of black females. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature and in the late 1980s, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her book Beloved. This book shows the effects of slavery on a former slave after the war. Morrison is not the only woman to receive awards for work. Maya Angelou given many awards, including Grammys in 1994 and 1996. She received the one for the recording of her poem “On the Pulse of Morning” recited at President Clinton’s inauguration and one for “Phenomenal Woman.” She along with many others has shown explemary talent in literature.