Toni Morrison passes away at the age of 88

Toni Morrison the first African American woman to win the Noble Prize in Literature in 1993. Morrison was born on February 18, 1931 in Loraine, Ohio. She received a BA in English from Howard University and an MA in English from Cornell University, where she studied the works of Faulkner and Virginia Woolf. She was the author of 11 novels , she wrote books for children and wrote numerous essays. She penned two plays, two short fiction stories and one libretto. She also wrote university papers.Among her great achievement were celebrated works like “Song of Solomon,” which received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977, and “Beloved,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988.

Barack Obama remembers the great lady in the following words “Toni Morrison was a national treasure. Her writing was not just beautiful but meaningful — a challenge to our conscience and a call to greater empathy. She was as good a storyteller, as captivating, in person as she was on the page. In 2012 she was awarded by the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama. She authored an essay on politics after the election of Donald Trump for the New Yorker titled as” Mourning of Whiteness.

Morrison family stated that she died in New York on Monday night after a short illness.

“Toni Morrison passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends,” the statement said. She loved the written word and “was most at home when writing,” the statement stated .

Rest in peace Toni Morrison.