TONI MORRISON
Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison (1931-2019) was born and raised in Lorain, Ohio. She went to Howard University in Washington DC for an undergraduate degree, then Cornell University for her M.A. Almost a decade passed (marriage, children, divorce) before she became the first female black editor at Random House in 1967. In 1970 she published The Bluest Eye, a signal debut, and by 1975 her writing career moved her out of editing and into a rise to one of the premier novelists in the United States. In 1987 she published Beloved, her epic ghost story in a sense, which earned her financial security, a nationwide bestseller for half a year. She was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 for her lifetime of work to date. She was the first black woman of any nation to win the prize. The eminence of being recognized as a world writer did not stop or slow down her writing or teaching (fellowships, lectureships, as befit her position). She died August 5, 2019, at 88 years.
Sula
Sula
Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Their devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the black community and Sula has become a pariah. But their friendship ends in an unforgivable betrayal—or does it end? Terrifying, comic, ribald and tragic, Sula is a work that overflows with life.
“You can’t go wrong by reading or re-reading the collected works of Toni Morrison. Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Sula, everything else — they’re transcendent, all of them. You’ll be glad you read them.”–Barack Obama