Toni Morrison

TONI MORRISON

Date of Birth: February 18, 1931
Birthplace: Lorain, OH
Current Residence: Princeton, NJ
Education: Howard University, B.A., 1953; Cornell University, M.A., 1955.
Profession: University Professor, Princeton University. 

I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither.
-Toni Morrison, New York Times, August 26, 1987

When I wrote Beloved, I thought about it for three years. I started writing the manuscript after thinking about it, and getting to know the people and getting over the fear of entering that arena, and it took me three more years to write it. But those other three years I was still at work, though I hadn't put a word down.
-Toni Morrison, New York Times, September 11, 1994  

It seems somehow both constricting and inadequate to describe Toni Morrison as the country's preeminent black novelist, since in both gifts and accomplishments she transcends categorization, yet the characterization is inescapable not merely because it is true but because the very nature of Morrison's work dictates it. Not merely has black American life been the central preoccupation of her five novels...but as she has matured she has concentrated on distilling all of black experience into her books; quite purposefully it seems, she is striving not for the particular but for the universal.
-Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post, September, 16, 1987