Who Is Toni Morrison?

She is one of the leading writers, espeically of novels, in the late 20th century USA.

She is African American, born in 1931 in a working class family in Ohio.  Her name was different, too, she was Chloe Anthony Wofford -- her nickname was Toni, and she married a man named Morrison.

Morrison's books tackle a lot of the cultural and historical baggage that many African Americans especially wrestle with.  More broadly, her books are about discovery of the self, and about resolving problems and pain from the past.  In Beloved, published in 1987,  a lead character is a ghost which plagues a family trying not to face up to their violent past.  Morrison won the Pultzer prize for Beloved, perhaps her best known fiction.

But I have to say, as a personal note, I found Beloved quite hard going to read and follow what was happening.

Morrison has also written essays, children's books, songs, an opera and a play.  In 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature -- the first African American to receive it.