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Toni Morrison 1931–, American writer, b. Lorain, Ohio, as Chloe Anthony Wofford. Her fiction is noted for its spare poetic language, emotional intensity, and sensitive observation of life. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), is the story of a girl ruined by a racist society and its violence. Song of Solomon (1977; National Book Award) established her as one of America's leading novelists. It concerns a middle-class man who achieves self-knowledge through the discovery of his rural black heritage. Her later fiction includes Beloved (1987; Pulitzer), a powerful account of the legacy of slavery, and Jazz (1992), a tale of love and murder set in Harlem in the 1920s. Her other work includes the novels Sula (1973), Tar Baby (1981), and Paradise (1997), the essay collections Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power and Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (both: 1992), and a children's book, The Big Box (2000), written with her son, Slade. Morrison was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature.
See studies by B. W. Jones (1985) and A. I. Vinson (1985); Conversations with Toni Morrison (1994).
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