#art, Toni Morrison – Art and Social Justice

Toni Morrison, née Chloe Ardelia Wofford, (Ohio, 1931- New York 2019),​ was a North American novelist, essayist, editor and professor. She was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

Morrison from an early age was very much attracted to literature and writing. She studied Humanities at Howard University and also received a Masters degree in Literature from Cornell. In 1955 after her graduation she began teaching at Texas Southern University in Houston, and later at Howard as well as in other academic centres throughout her years.

Morrison wrote about such topics as self-identity, racial discrimination, violence and slavery. With her unique narrative style she was able to deeply explore the psychological attributes of her characters. Always a fighter for civil rights and equality, she was very well respected and admired in the literary world.

In 1960 she became the first Black female fiction editor for Random House, New York…

Her most famous novel «Beloved«, (1987), is about slavery in the United States and how it affected the life of a mother and daughter. For this novel she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988…

Other novels are «Tar Baby»; «Love» and «Song of Solomon«. These works explore issues of identity, violence, family and the search for liberty. Her work always reflects her ideas of social justice and truth…

Toni Morrison, like myself, greatly admired President Bill Clinton (for me the best president the US has had in modern times) and in an article in The New Yorker she said: «…Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children’s lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald’s-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas.» («Talk of the Town: Comment» October 1998. The New Yorker).

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