The list of reasons to admire novelist Toni Morrison—who died two weeks ago, at age eighty-eight—is long.
Morrison was a dedicated teacher—at Texas Southern University and Howard University before she became famous, and at Princeton University afterward. She also made a name for herself in publishing as the first black woman to become senior editor in Random House's fiction department. While working and raising two children on her own, Morrison rose each day at 4:00 a.m. to devote time to her own writing. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. Her most famous, Beloved, followed in 1987, and was later made into a film. For her depictions of African-American and female experience, Morrison was awarded the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature for giving "life to an essential aspect of American reality."
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