When she was a young girl, Toni Morrison’s father taught her an important lesson about work.
For more than five decades the late literary figure commanded classrooms with wit, sensibility and grace.
"Margaret Atwood's 1987 Review of Beloved" (via Literary Hub)
Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.
“…another triumph. Indeed, Ms. Morrison’s versatility and technical and emotional range appear to know no bounds. If there were any doubts about her stature as a pre-eminent American novelist, of her own or any other generation, Beloved will put them to rest. In three words or less, it’s a hair-raiser … Through the different voices and memories of the book, including that of Sethe’s mother, a survivor of the infamous slave-ship crossing, we experience American slavery as it was lived by those who were its objects of exchange, both at its best—which wasn’t very good—and at its worst, which was as bad as can be imagined. Above all, it is seen as one of the most viciously antifamily institutions human beings have ever devised. The slaves are motherless, fatherless, deprived of their mates, their children, their kin. It is a world in which people suddenly vanish and are never seen again, not through accident or covert operation or terrorism, but as a matter of everyday legal policy … Beloved is written in an antiminimalist prose that is by turns rich, graceful, eccentric, rough, lyrical, sinuous, colloquial and very much to the point.”
Toni Morrison - Nobel Lecture - NobelPrize.org
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture/
1993/12/07 - Listen to an audio recording of Toni Morrison's Nobel Lecture. “Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise.” Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard this story, ...
Toni Morrison - Banquet speech - NobelPrize.org
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/speech/
Toni Morrison's speech at the Nobel Banquet, December 10, 1993. Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen,. I entered this hall pleasantly haunted by those who have entered it before me. That company of Laureates is ...
---她的小說予人最恆久的印象乃是對人性的同情以及對人類的觀照，而且總是富於幽默。
其作品中史詩的力量、對話的精準及詩意盎然地呈現美國黑人世界，格外令人激賞。---1993，瑞典皇家學院，“童妮.摩里森頌辭”（摘錄）。
“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
We are profoundly sad to report that Toni Morrison has died at the age of eighty-eight. She died last night at Montefiore Medical Center in New York.
The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s first novel, was published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston in 1970. Morrison followed with Sula in 1973, and nine subsequent novels, all of them published with Alfred A. Knopf.
Morrison’s novels were celebrated and embraced by booksellers, critics, educators, readers, and librarians. Her work also ignited controversy, notably in school districts that tried to ban her books. Few American writers won more awards for their books and writing. Morrison was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for Beloved. In 1993, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, with the Swedish Academy recognizing her as an author “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.” In 1996, she was honored with the National Book Foundation’s Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, and in 2012, President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Morrison also worked as an editor at Random House – the first female African-American editor in company history – from 1967 to 1983. There, she published Gayl Jones, Toni Cade Bambara, Henry Dumas, Huey P. Newton, Muhammad Ali, and Angela Davis, among others. Her work as an editor and publisher at Random House demonstrated a unique commitment to writers of color, and helped in opening industry doors to them.
And for over five decades, Morrison was also a part-time teacher of creative writing and literature, often bringing students together with other writers, at Howard University (from which she graduated in 1953), Yale University, SUNY Purchase, Bard College, Rutgers University, SUNY Albany, and Princeton University, where she retired as Robert F. Goheen Chair in the Humanities in 2006.
Many at Knopf and Random House came to know her as a valued colleague and dear friend.
The Morrison family issued this statement: “It is with profound sadness we share that, following a short illness, our adored mother and grandmother, Toni Morrison, passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends. She was an extremely devoted mother, grandmother, and aunt who reveled in being with her family and friends. The consummate writer who treasured the written word, whether her own, her students or others, she read voraciously and was most at home when writing. Although her passing represents a tremendous loss, we are grateful she had a long, well lived life.
While we would like to thank everyone who knew and loved her, personally or through her work, for their support at this difficult time, we ask for privacy as we mourn this loss to our family. We will share information in the near future about how we will celebrate Toni’s incredible life.”
Robert Gottlieb, Morrison’s longtime editor at Knopf, said: “She was a great woman and a great writer, and I don’t know which I will miss more.”
Sonny Mehta, Chairman of Knopf, said: “Toni Morrison’s working life was spent in the service of literature: writing books, reading books, editing books, teaching books. I can think of few writers in American letters who wrote with more humanity or with more love for language than Toni. Her narratives and mesmerizing prose have made an indelible mark on our culture. Her novels command and demand our attention. They are canonical works, and more importantly, they are books that remain beloved by readers.”
February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019
(Posted by the author's publisher)
Toni Morrison 在 Harvard University。
Toni Morrison will deliver the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures this spring at Harvard University. The overarching theme of Morrison’s six lectures is “The Origins of Others: The Literature of Belonging.” The first, titled “Romancing Slavery,” is set for March 2. The talks will be held at Sander's Theatre Harvard University.
(Posted by the author's publisher).
Morrison’s first Norton Lecture set for March 2
Toni Morrison will deliver the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, which will be held throughout March and April at Sanders Theatre. Hosted by the Mahindra Humanities Center, Morrison is the 58th scholar to be given the arts and…
NEWS.HARVARD.EDU
Everyman's Library 分享了 Toni Morrison 的相片。
In this celebrated novel, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrisoncreated a new way of rendering the contradictory nuances of black life in America. Its earthy poetic language and striking use of folklore and myth established Morrison as a major voice in contemporary fiction...
Toni Morrison11月28日 7:00 · New Milford, CT, United States ·
“It sounded old. Deserve. Old and tired and beaten to death. Deserve. Now it seemed to him that he was always saying or thinking that he didn't deserve some bad luck, or some bad treatment from others. He'd told Guitar that he didn't "deserve" his family's dependence, hatred, or whatever. That he didn't even "deserve" to hear all the misery and mutual accusations his parents unloaded on him. Nor did he "deserve" Hagar's vengeance. But why shouldn't his parents tell him their personal problems? If not him, then who? And if a stranger could try to kill him, surely Hagar, who knew him and whom he'd thrown away like a wad of chewing gum after the flavor was gone––she had a right to try to kill him too.
Apparently he though he deserved only to be loved--from a distance, though--and given what he wanted. And in return he would be...what? Pleasant? Generous? Maybe all he was really saying was: I am not responsible for your pain; share your happiness with me but not your unhappiness.”
― from SONG OF SOLOMON
Book:Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family’s origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world. READ an excerpt here: http://knopfdoubleday.com/…/…/song-of-solomon/9780679445043/
(Posted by the author's publisher)
Vintage Books & Anchor Books
"It never occurred to either of us that the earth itself might have been unyielding. We had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt just as Pecola's father had dropped his seeds in his own plot of black dirt. Our innocence and faith were no more productive than his lust or despair."
--from "The Bluest Eye" By Toni Morrison
"Love is never any better than the lover. ”
“Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.”
Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in.Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison’s virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing. READ an excerpt here: http://knopfdoubleday.com/book/117662/the-bluest-eye/
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