In discussing her writing, Toni Morrison says: "I do not write about people who are just going to live a happy life. It's not interesting, it's not compelling, there is no angst there.... But... if people know something, and have an epiphany, at the end of my books, that is called happiness."
Biography
(courtesy of Le Prix Nobel, republished in Nobel Lectures, used by permission. Morrison won the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature)
"Born Chloe Anthony Wofford, in 1931 in Lorain (Ohio), the second of four children in a black working-class family. Displayed an early interest in literature. Studied humanities at Howard and Cornell Universities, followed by an academic career at Texas Southern University, Howard University, Yale, and since 1989, a chair at Princeton University. She has also worked as an editor for Random House, a critic, and given numerous public lectures, specializing in African-American literature.
"She made her debut as a novelist in 1970, soon gaining the attention of both critics and a wider audience for her epic power, unerring ear for dialogue, and her poetically-charged and richly-expressive depictions of Black America. A member since 1981 of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has been awarded a number of literary distinctions, among them the Pulitzer Prize in 1988."
In discussing her writing, Toni Morrison says: "I do not write about people who are just going to live a happy life. It's not interesting, it's not compelling, there is no angst there.... But... if people know something, and have an epiphany, at the end of my books, that is called happiness."