‘For My People’: Toni Morrison and Literature

Ke’shunta Drake is an Assistant Editor at Historianspeaks.org. She is a graduate student

Few modern writers possess the intentionality of Toni Morrison. Over the span of almost fifty years. she produced powerful stories on Black life and people. One of the most renowned writers of the twentieth century, Morrison paved the way for contemporary authors like Jessmyn Ward, Terri McMillian, and Jacqueline Woodson. Morrison is a multi-faceted African American author, writer, essayist, children author, and professor. She has written eleven novels, and a host of children’s books, plays, poetry, and nonfiction, including the critically acclaimed novel Beloved, which was adapted into a film in 1998. She was won a Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 1988, won and a Nobel Prize 1993. She encouraged fellow writers to carve out spaces for themselves and boldly tell their stories. Questioned in interviews about the subjects of her work, especially about the absence of white characters in her work, she responded: “I am writing for Black people.”

Born in 1931 in Lorrain, Ohio, Morrison was raised in a working-class family. She spent most of her free time reading, writing, and expanding her vocabulary. Her parents instilled a sense of pride by introducing her to Black folklore, music, and ghost stories as an adolescent. In 1949, she enrolled at Howard University. While attending Howard, she actively participated in the theater department and in several college productions. Morrison graduated from Howard in 1953 with a BA in English. After which, she went on to earn her MA in Art at Cornell University. Shortly thereafter, she began teaching at Texas A&M and later at Howard University. After a divorce and giving birth to a second son in 1965, Morison began working as an editor at L.W. Singer in Syracuse, New York. Two years later, she transferred to Random House, where she became the first Black woman senior editor in the fiction department.

As a Senior Editor at Random House, Morrison played a central role in bringing Black literature into the mainstream. One of her first projects was the groundbreaking Contemporary African Literature, a collection of literature written by Nigerians Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, and South African playwright Athol Fugard. She mentored a new generation of Black writers, including poet and novelists Toni Cade Bambara and Gayle Jones. She also helped to get the autobiographies of Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali into print. Morrison also worked actively with radical activists such as Huey P. Newton. Other books that she developed and edited included The Black Book, an anthology of photographs, illustrations, essays, documents of Black life in the United States from slavery up to 1920. She assumed a variety of roles to write about Black people and amplify their concerns and stories.

Morrison was a prolific writer. During the 1970s, her fictional project about a young girl who longed to have blue eyes become her first novel, titled, The Bluest Eye Sula, her second novel, which was nominated for a National Book Award. Her third novel, Song of Solomon, brought national recognition from the Book of the Month Club, the first novel by a Black author since Richard Wright’s Native Son. After writing her fourth book Tar Baby, Morrison left publishing to devote more time to writing. In 1987, she published her most celebrated novel, Beloved, which was adapted as a film. The book is based on a true story. Margaret Garner, an enslaved mother who escaped from slavery in Kentucky. Once caught by slavecatchers, Garner killed her two-year old daughter and injured her other children rather than allowing them to be re-enslaved.

Morrison spent the latter part of her career as the Chair of the Humanities department at Princeton University. She also continued to write producing new work including God Help the Child and Love. She conducted writing seminars that challenged her students’ creative intellects. She retired from Princeton University in 2006. In 2017, Princeton, dedicated a building in her honor. Morrison died on August 5, 2019 due to complications of pneumonia, she was 88 years old.

Morrison’s work provided memorable, complex and deeply layered portraits of Black life and portraits through her radicalized use of language and literature. Her moto was “If there is a book that you want to read, but hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it.” This quote alone inspired many contemporary African-American writers. Morrison’s work will live on as an embodiment of her love and respect for Black people and their stories.

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This post was previously published on historianspeaks.org.

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