Toni Morrison: A Brief Account Of A Lengthy Story

Emeka Nwakobi

Toni Morrison, born Chloe Ardelia Wofford, is an enigma, a literary giant in every sense of the word. Her achievements in literature is akin to a revolution as the Arab spring, it rivals any record ever set. A major proponent of women’s right, one of the strongest voices ever raised against racism; her works is a replica of where we are coming from and where we should be.

All her writings are like courses pushing against the dehumanized, subjugated, brutal, miserable, inhuman conditions of Blacks all over the world. She resurrects sublime issues as slavery, racism, sexism, classicism, segregation and other related issues which the rest of the world seems to want to forget in a hurry or pretend they were nonexistent.

Her debut novel “The Bluest Eyes,” was published in 1970. Song of Solomon, one of her most celebrated works which won the acclaimed National Book Critics Circle Award, published in 1977, was birthed a few years after. She went on in the same stride and force of penetration to win, in 1988 and 1987 respectively, the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her book “Beloved,” which was in 1998 adapted into a film. One would not be mistaken to call her a champion of liberalism and humanism, owing to her works which resounds these themes unapologetically.

In 1993, she won the mother of all awards, the Nobel Prize in Literature. Three years later, she was honoured with the National Book Foundations Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Also in 2012, Morrison was presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama. The Nobel Laureate has received virtually every award conceivable including; The American Academy and Institute of Art and Letters Award, Honorary Doctor of Letters at Harvard University, Commander of the Arts and Letters, Paris, Honorary Doctotrate of Humane Letters from Gustavus Adolphus College, National Humanities Award, Honorary Doctorate of Letters from University of Oxford, Norman Mailer Prize; Lifetime Achievement, and Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction. The list is inexhaustible, one wouldn’t be wrong to refer to Morrison as a “literary god,” keeping in mind the fit she has so far achieved.

Morrison is the author of at least eleven novels; The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), Beloved (1987), Jazz (1992), Paradise (1997), Love (2003), A Mercy (2008), Home (2012), and God Help the Child (2015). She also wrote a handful of children’s literature, short fiction, plays and dozens of nonfiction publication.

Before her advent in the literary world and subsequent take-over, she taught English for two years at Texas Southern University in Houston, and Howard University for seven years. A few years later, she went on to work as an editor in 1965, for L.W. Singer, a textbook division of Random House in New York. Two years later she transferred to Random House in New York City, where she became their first black woman senior editor in the fiction department.

One cannot really talk about issues bordering on racism, humanism, feminism and even democracy as it evolved in recent times without making reference to Morrison’s works. She has formed the bedrock and laid the foundation, for the psychological revolution that would purge humanity of a great deal of inordinate bias.