Contemplative. Absorbing. Mesmerizing.
These adjectives are just some of the few used to describe the often complex and highly structured works of Pulitzer Prize winning author Toni Morrison, one of the most preeminent African-American novelists today.
Morrison has penned a number of prominent works, including "Sula," "Beloved," and "Jazz" and is among the greatest of contemporary women writers of any color.
Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain, Ohio to parents Ramah and George on February 18, 1931. In an interview with Jane Bakerman, Morrison ironically said she "never planned to be a writer" and actually had aspirations to be dancer.
Morrison turned to fiction as an outlet to vent her frustrations and to comfort her loneliness. Morrison told Bakerman that "after I had published, it was sort of a compulsive thing because it was a way of knowing, a way of thinking that I found necessary."
In 1949, Morrison traveled to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University where in 1953 she graduated with a B.A. in English and a minor in Classics. She later moved to Cornell University for graduate studies and graduated in 1955 with a M.A. degree.
Writing to capture the essence and nature of the culture in which she grew up, Morrison vividly and magnificently intrigues her reader with often surreal character descriptions and highly elaborate plots.
She began her writing career with her first novel, "The Bluest Eye" (1969). In the story, Morrison creates the story of a young battered African-American girl who seeks love and acceptance through the miracle of blue eyes.
"I try to show a little girl as a total and complete victim of whatever was around her," Morrison said to Bakerman.
"The Bluest Eye," which is thematically similar to her other novels, "is written about beauty, miracles, and self-images, about the way in which people can hurt each other about whether or not one is beautiful. Beauty, love ... actually, I think, all the time that I write, I'm writing about love or its absence. Although I don't start out that way," Morrison said to Bakerman.
In 1973, Morrison's second work, "Sula," was published to the acclaim of reviewers and readers alike.
Morrison explores a range of emotions, particularly of violence.
"My effort is always to push every emotion all the way to its final consequence because it interests me more that way," Morrison said to Bakerman.
This extremely rich and poignant novel follows the lives of two black women from their beginnings in a small Ohio town to the separate paths each trailblaze as they grow older. It is a stark, honest examination of different life-styles and is crowded with images and symbols of anger, love, frustration, and sadness.
In this novel, Morrison brilliantly depicts the effect of two different environments on the development of the black characters, who are seemingly puppets in the oppressive outside white world.
After "Sula," Morrison's fame and popularity skyrocketed.
"Song of Solomon" was released in 1977 and later was spotlighted as a Book-of-the Month-Club main selection. It was only the second novel selected by the organization to feature an African-American writer since Richard Wright's, "Native Son."
Later it was cited by the National Book Critics with their distinguished "National Book Critics Circle Award."
Success came rapidly for Morrison. "Beloved," released in 1987 was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Morrison's other famous novels include "Tar Baby" published in 1981 and "Jazz," in 1992.
In 1993, Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, the first African-American writer to receive such a distinction.
In all her works, Morrison forges a uniquely powerful relationship with the reader.
Bakerman notes, "Morrison anticipates that her readers will bring their experiences to bear on her fiction in order that the experiences they live with her characters will help them 'not let it happen' in their lives. Her novels are never didactic; they do not preach, they teach."
Morrison, like many of her contemporaries, chooses to focus her subjects which have little representation in the literary world especially black women and their spheres of influence.
"Critics generally don't associate black people with ideas. They see marginal people ... sociologically interesting people perhaps but very parochial ... We are people, not aliens. We live, we love, we die," Morrison said in the Bakerman interview.
