Toni Morrison, author and Nobel laureate, dies aged 88

[garbon]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/06/toni-morrison-author-and-pulitzer-winner-dies-aged-88

Toni Morrison, who chronicled the African American experience in fiction over five decades, has died aged 88.

In a statement on Tuesday, her family and publisher Knopf confirmed that the author died in Montefiore Medical Center in New York on Monday night after a short illness.

Born in an Ohio steel town in the depths of the Great Depression, Morrison carved out a literary home for the voices of African Americans, first as an acclaimed editor and then with novels such as The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon and Beloved. Over the course of a career that garnered honours including the Pulitzer prize, the Nobel prize, the Légion d'Honneur and a Presidential Medal of Freedom presented to her in 2012 by her friend Barack Obama, her work became part of the fabric of American life as it was woven into high school syllabuses up and down the country.

Describing her as "our adored mother and grandmother", Morrison's family said in a statement: "Although her passing represents a tremendous loss, we are grateful she had a long, well lived life. While we would like to thank everyone who knew and loved her, personally or through her work, for their support at this difficult time, we ask for privacy as we mourn this loss to our family."

On Tuesday, writers, politicians and actors paid tribute. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders wrote on Twitter: "Today we lost an American legend. May she rest in peace", while Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar wrote: "Holding all those touched by Toni Morrison in my heart today".

Television producer Shonda Rhimes recalled: "She made me understand 'writer' was a fine profession. I grew up wanting to be only her. Dinner with her was a night I will never forget. Rest, Queen." And writer Roxane Gay wrote: "This is a devastating loss to the world of words, to our understanding of power and it's reach, to the cultivation of empathy, to rich, nuanced, elegant storytelling. Her work was a gift to every one who had the pleasure of reading her."

Margaret Atwood called Morrison a "giant of her times and ours .... That her strong voice will now be missing in this age of the renewed targeting of minorities in the United States and elsewhere is a tragedy for the rest of us."

The house where Morrison was born in 1931 stands about a mile from the gates of the Lorain steel factory in Ohio – the first of a series of apartments the family lived in while her father added odd jobs to his shifts at the plant to make the rent. He defied his supervisor and took a second unionised job so he could send his daughter to college. After studying English at Howard University and Cornell, she returned to Washington DC to teach, marrying the architect Howard Morrison and giving birth to two sons.

In 1965, her marriage over after six years, she moved to upstate New York and began working as an editor. It was in Syracuse that she realised the novel she wanted to read didn't exist, and started writing it herself.

"I had two small children in a small place," she told the New York Times in 1979, "and I was very lonely. Writing was something for me to do in the evenings, after the children were asleep."

...

[grumbler]

   Good innings, though.

[Syt]

RIP

[The Brain]

RIP