Toni Morrison
1931–2019 · American (Lorain, Ohio / New York) · Late 20th Century America
Known for: Greatest African American novelist—Beloved, Song of Solomon, Sula. Nobel Prize 1993
Toni Morrison was a single mother working as a book editor at Random House who wrote her novels before dawn. She was the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was regal, intimidating, and fiercely protective of Black narrative sovereignty—she refused to center white characters or white readers.
Beloved, based on the true story of an enslaved woman who killed her child rather than return to slavery, is widely considered the greatest American novel of the late 20th century. She was generous with younger writers and taught at Princeton into her 80s.
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