Toni Morrison Quotes - 1 quote
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Toni Morrison (1931-2019) was an acclaimed American novelist, essayist, editor, and professor. She was born Chloe Ardelia Wofford on February 18, 1931, in Lorain, Ohio. She is celebrated for her profound exploration of the Black experience, particularly the lives of Black women, through her poetic and evocative prose. Morrison's first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), tells the story of a young Black girl who yearns for blue eyes. Her subsequent works, including Sula (1973) and Song of Solomon (1977), further established her as a powerful voice in American literature. Her novel Beloved (1987), inspired by the true story of an enslaved woman, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 1993, Morrison became the first Black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. She also received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012. Beyond her writing, Morrison was a senior editor at Random House, where she championed Black literature and authors. Morrison passed away on August 5, 2019, but her legacy endures through her influential works and contributions to literature.
“It started that way: laughing children, dancing men, crying women and then it got mixed up. Women stopped crying and danced; men sat down and cried; children danced, women laughed, children cried until, exhausted and riven, all and each lay about the Clearing damp and gasping for breath. In the silence that followed, Baby Suggs, holy, offered up to them her great big heart.
“She did not tell them to clean up their lives or to go and sin no more. She did not tell them they were the blessed of the earth, its inheriting meek or its glorybound pure.
“She told them that the only grace they could have was the grace they could imagine. That if they could not see it, they would not have it.”
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