Postmodern
Toni Morrison
1931 – 2019
African American novelist, essayist, and academic (1931–2019)
- United States
- American
- Postmodernism
- ◆ Nobel 1993
About
Chloe Anthony Wofford "Toni" Morrison was an American novelist and editor. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987).
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Portrait by John Mathew Smith (celebrity-photos.com) (CC BY-SA 2.0) via Wikimedia Commons.
Life on the Timeline
Major Works
Exam Dossier
Most-asked topics
- The Bluest Eye and internalized racism/beauty standards
- Beloved and the legacy of slavery/trauma
- Song of Solomon and myth, flight, naming
- Morrison's narrative techniques (nonlinear structure, multiple narrators, magical realism)
- African American oral tradition and folklore in Morrison's fiction
- Nobel Prize 1993 and Pulitzer Prize 1988
- Black female subjectivity and community in Morrison's novels
- Morrison as editor and public intellectual (Playing in the Dark)
Previous-year themes
- Identification of Morrison's novels and their publication years
- Opening/closing lines of Beloved and The Bluest Eye
- Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize associations with specific works
- Thematic concerns: slavery, memory, motherhood, racial trauma
- Characters and their symbolic significance (Sethe, Pilate, Milkman, Pecola)
- Morrison's place among African American/postmodern novelists
- Critical terms associated with Morrison (rememory, magical realism)
Common confusions
- Confusing Beloved (about Sethe and infanticide, Pulitzer 1988) with Song of Solomon (about Milkman Dead's quest for identity, National Book Critics Circle Award 1977).
- Mixing up The Bluest Eye (Morrison's debut, 1970, about Pecola) with Sula (1973, about the friendship of Nel and Sula).
- Confusing the year Morrison won the Nobel Prize (1993) with the year she won the Pulitzer Prize (1988).
- Attributing the flight/flying motif to Beloved instead of Song of Solomon.
- Confusing Morrison's critical work Playing in the Dark with her fiction.
- Mixing up Jazz (1920s Harlem setting) with Paradise (set in an all-Black Oklahoma town, 1997).
Memory tricks
'Bluest Eye Begins' — The Bluest Eye (1970) is Morrison's Beginning/debut novel.
'Song brings fame, Solomon flies' — Song of Solomon (1977) brought national fame; remember the flight motif.
'Beloved = Both Prizes almost' — Pulitzer in 1988 (for Beloved, published 1987); Nobel came later in 1993.
Chronology mnemonic: 'Blue Sula Sings Tar Beloved Jazz Paradise Love Mercy Home Child' (Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved, Jazz, Paradise, Love, A Mercy, Home, God Help the Child) in order.
'Nobel = '93, Pulitzer = '88' — Nobel is the later, larger number and later year.
'Margaret Garner gave Beloved its ghost' — links the historical source to the novel's plot.
