As the staff of LA Vibe is preparing to release editorials, articles, magazines, books, etc., we are concurrently mourning and rejoicing the transition of a literary giant in kingdom. There are millions of African American women and women of color, including LA Vibe, who have easily fulfilled their desires of becoming publishers, editors, authors (and a host of other job-related fields) due to the labor of author Toni Morrison.
Early literature written by African-American women appeared around 1859, as part of a general renaissance of black literature in the 1850’s. The beginning included female authors such as Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Harriet Jacobs and Harriet E. Wilson. The Civil War and Reconstruction Era birthed out a new wave of African American female writers. However, something happened on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, OH that would change the trajectory of women of color in literature forever. African American novelist, essayist, editor, teacher and professor emeritus at Princeton University, Chloe Ardelia Wofford entered this world. Affectionately known as Toni Morrison, who was an fluent reader at an early age, had a sense of heritage and language through telling traditional African-American folktales, ghost stories and singing songs at a very early age.
In 1949, she enrolled at the well-known HBCU Howard University. Morrison graduated in 1953 with a B.A. in English and went on to earn a Master of Arts from Cornell University in 1955. In 1965, she began her career as an editor for L. W. Singer, a textbook division of publisher Random House, in Syracuse, New York. Two years later she transferred to Random House in New York City, where she became their first black woman senior editor in the fiction department. In that capacity, Morrison played a vital role in bringing black literature into the mainstream.
Our Beloved wrote her first novel while attending an informal group of poets and writers at Howard University who met to discuss their work. She attended one meeting with a short story about a black girl who longed to have blue eyes. Morrison later developed the story as her first novel, The Bluest Eye, getting up every morning at 4 am to write, while raising two children alone. Even though she began the novel in college, The Bluest Eye was published in 1970 when Morrison was thirty-nine years old. Even though the novel did not sale well, she was determined to pursue her passion to tell the story of women of color in whatever faction her heart desired. And we are forever grateful for her dedication to fulfill her dreams because it paved the way for so many of us afterwards.
In 1987, Morrison published her most celebrated novel, Beloved. Inspired by the true story of an enslaved African-American woman, Margaret Garner. The writer learned of Garner’s story while compiling The Black Book. Garner had escaped slavery but was pursued by slave hunters. Facing a return to slavery, Garner killed her two-year-old daughter but was captured before she could kill herself. Morrison's novel imagines the dead baby returning as a ghost, Beloved, to haunt her mother and family. Beloved was a critical success, and a best-seller for 25 weeks.
After winning several awards, Beloved reemerged again with the assistance of business mogul Oprah Winfery. In 1998, the movie adaptation of Beloved was released, directed by Johnathan Demme and co-produced by Oprah Winfrey, who had spent ten years bringing it to the screen.
The first African American Nobel Prize recipient, who was known for her future-fetching opinions of politics and feminism, heard her call to rest on August 05, 2019. Our adored mother and grandmother has transitioned peacefully and with honor despite the criticism and rejection she received in her lifetime. We honor her today.
Rest Well Solider.
“And I am all the things I have ever loved: scuppernong wine, cool baptisms in silent water, dream books and number playing.” ― Toni Morrison
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