Gallant best-selling author and the first black woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature (1993), Toni Morrison (1931-) was born Chloe Anthony Wofford on this day in the small midwestern town of Lorain, Ohio. Morrison learned to read at home before attending first grade.

"My world did not get smaller because I was a black female writer. It just got bigger," she once said.

An English major at Howard University, she became a beacon for African-American literature as a senior editor at Random House. In 1970, she wrote her first novel, The Bluest Eye, a poignant story about the search for racial identity.

"I wrote my first novel because I wanted to read it," she said.

She remained committed to the black experience in Sula (1970) and Song of Solomon (1977). Critics praised her and readers celebrated Morrison's talent for dialogue and passionate prose.

"Birth, life, and death each took place on the hidden side of a leaf," Morrison explained.

Beloved (1987), hailed as her most successful novel, was adapted for the screen by Oprah Winfrey and awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Literature. Morrison won the Nobel Prize following the powerful novel Jazz (1992), a glimpse of black city life in the 1920s, with characters "remembering what they were remembering in a time past."

Morrison's powerful storytelling celebrates the strength of each heart. No matter what the challenge, the spirit survives. She wrote in Tar Baby (1981): "At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough."

More Toni MORRISON Quotations

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