Toni Morrison Research Paper
The Life and Work of Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison, a premier contemporary American novelist, chronicles the African-American experience. Morrison has written six novels and a collection of essays and lectures. Her work has won national and international acclaim and has been translated into 14 languages. Her writing has been described as lyrical and she has been applauded for “writing prose with the luster of poetry.”
Morrison won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for her novel Belovedand the coveted Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. In a released statement, the Nobel Prize Committee of the Swedish Academy awarded the prize to Morrison “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect …show more content…
Continuing to use Morrison as a guide, African-American female authors have emerged as a consistent and critical dimension in literature.
In a 1994 interview with Time magazine, Morrison understands the significance of her work for female authors. “I felt I represented a whole world of women who either were silenced or who had never received the imprimatur of the established literary world. ...Seeing me up there might encourage them to write one of those books I’m desperate to read.”
Before Morrison, the most successful African-American writers were males. For example, the work of acclaimed African-American novelist and essayist James Baldwin had tremendous literary impact in the fifties and sixties. Racial themes were explored as they had never been before in his books Nobody Knows My Name and Go Tell It on the Mountain. Eventually, Baldwin felt uncomfortable living as a second-class citizen in the United States and became an ex-patriate who lived and worked from …show more content…
Beginning with his autobiography Black Boy in 1945, Wright continued with Outsiders, Uncle Tom’s Children, and his most important work Native Son. Ralph Ellison wrote only one book. Yet Ellison’s Invisible Man won a National Book Award in 1952 and this allowed him to join the ranks of male authors successful at depicting the disenfranchisement of the African-Americans in the United States.
Morrison is recognized as the most distinguished African-American novelist since Wright, Ellison, and Baldwin. In her work as an author, Morrison wanted to continue to broaden the perspective of American literature by telling the stories she felt were never told, stories about African-American girls and women and the racial and social pressures they faced. She wanted to write about people with the sensibilities of the culture she grew up in. Morrison wanted her work to focus on the joys and sorrows of their
Toni Morrison, a premier contemporary American novelist, chronicles the African-American experience. Morrison has written six novels and a collection of essays and lectures. Her work has won national and international acclaim and has been translated into 14 languages. Her writing has been described as lyrical and she has been applauded for “writing prose with the luster of poetry.”
Morrison won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for her novel Belovedand the coveted Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. In a released statement, the Nobel Prize Committee of the Swedish Academy awarded the prize to Morrison “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect …show more content…
Continuing to use Morrison as a guide, African-American female authors have emerged as a consistent and critical dimension in literature.
In a 1994 interview with Time magazine, Morrison understands the significance of her work for female authors. “I felt I represented a whole world of women who either were silenced or who had never received the imprimatur of the established literary world. ...Seeing me up there might encourage them to write one of those books I’m desperate to read.”
Before Morrison, the most successful African-American writers were males. For example, the work of acclaimed African-American novelist and essayist James Baldwin had tremendous literary impact in the fifties and sixties. Racial themes were explored as they had never been before in his books Nobody Knows My Name and Go Tell It on the Mountain. Eventually, Baldwin felt uncomfortable living as a second-class citizen in the United States and became an ex-patriate who lived and worked from …show more content…
Beginning with his autobiography Black Boy in 1945, Wright continued with Outsiders, Uncle Tom’s Children, and his most important work Native Son. Ralph Ellison wrote only one book. Yet Ellison’s Invisible Man won a National Book Award in 1952 and this allowed him to join the ranks of male authors successful at depicting the disenfranchisement of the African-Americans in the United States.
Morrison is recognized as the most distinguished African-American novelist since Wright, Ellison, and Baldwin. In her work as an author, Morrison wanted to continue to broaden the perspective of American literature by telling the stories she felt were never told, stories about African-American girls and women and the racial and social pressures they faced. She wanted to write about people with the sensibilities of the culture she grew up in. Morrison wanted her work to focus on the joys and sorrows of their