Top 10 Unbelievable Facts about Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison by Angela Radulescu from Wikimedia Commons

Top 10 Unbelievable Facts about Toni Morrison

An American novelist, editor, essayist, and lecturer by the name of Toni Morrison, Chloe Ardelia Wofford (1931–2019) was born in New York City. We’ll look at ten fascinating facts about Toni Morrison so you can have a better idea of what made her the person and author that we’ve come to know and adore. Many readers may not be aware of the many other aspects of her colourful life, despite the fact that she is well-known for her work and accomplishments.

Morrison was born and reared in a working-class African-American family in Lorain, Ohio, which affected her love and enthusiasm for Black culture as she was exposed to folktales, songs, and storytelling as a young child. Her work, which was centred on the Black American experience and their difficulties, spoke to a wide audience. She won numerous honours after penning noteworthy works including The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1974), Song of Solomon (1977), Tar Baby (1981), and Beloved (1987), including the Nobel Prize in Literature (1993), the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and numerous others.

1. She developed a passion for literature as a young girl

Toni Morrison by Angela Radulescu from Wikimedia Commons

Folktales, ghost stories, and songs with African-American roots were taught to Morrison by his parents to help him develop his background and language. She became passionate about books as a result, and she read a lot when she was young. Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy were only two of the authors she adored.

2. Her writing style was influenced by her upbringing

At Howard University, Morrison took a workshop to launch her writing career while still an undergraduate. Morrison claims that her family used visions and signs frequently to foretell the future when she was a child and that they were “intimate with the supernatural.”

Morrison’s parents emphasised storytelling in their home, and both the adults and kids enjoyed sharing stories. She believed that because of her early experiences with storytelling, those tales had an impact on her writing.

3. In reality, “Toni” was a nickname

When Morrison was twelve years old, he converted to Catholicism and adopted the baptismal name Anthony in honour of Anthony of Padua. People had trouble pronouncing the name Chloe years later when Morrison was a student at Howard University. To avoid any future misunderstandings over the pronunciation, she then began going by her moniker Toni.

4. She didn’t think of herself as a good mother

She met Harold Morrison, an architect while attending Howard University, and they got married. She was left to raise their two sons alone after their 1964 divorce. Her desire to concentrate on her work led her to frequently feel as though she wasn’t a good mother.

5. She got divorced but never remarried

She has never spoken about the reasons for her divorce, although she has previously made it clear that her ex-husband desired a more submissive wife. He didn’t need me passing judgement on him, as I did, she added. A lot.” After they divorced, she didn’t get married again.

6. Her father saw two people being lynched

Cartersville, Georgia, was the place where Morrison’s father was raised. When he was 15 years old, he saw two Black businessmen who lived on his street being lynched by white people.

Her father relocated to Lorain, Ohio, a town with a history of racial integration, soon after the lynching in an effort to escape racism and find better work in the state’s industrial economy rather than sharecropping. Morrison mentioned that her father never shared details about his experience but she was sure that it was traumatizing. 

7. She was one of Random House’s first Black editors

Morrison began working as a fiction editor at Random House in Syracuse, New York, in 1965 and was one of the very few Black editors there. Morrison played a significant role in bringing Black literature into the mainstream of publishing as an editor. She purchased and edited works written by Angela Davis, Toni Cade Bambara, Huey Newton, Gayl Jones, and other authors. The Greatest: My Own Story by Muhammad Ali was one of the most popular books she edited.

Prior to the 1973 release of The Bluest Eye, few were aware of her own personal writing endeavours. When her book was out, Morrison claimed that others at Random House “saw the review in The New York Times.” After that, she said “it got a really horrible review in The New York Times Book Review on Sunday, and then it got a very good Daily Review,” making her work known to a wider audience. 

8. She was the first African-American to win the Literature Nobel Prize

The 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature was given to Morrison. She was the first African-American woman to win the honorary award, making history. In his works, Morrison “gives life to a fundamental component of American reality with visionary force and poetic import.”

In her acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, she spoke about an elderly Black woman who is blind and is approached by a group of young people. Is there no context for our life, they enquire of her? No song, no book, no vitamin-filled poem, no experience-based history that you might share with us to help us start strong.

Morrison then says, “Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story.”

9. Some of her papers were damaged by a house fire

In Grandview, New York, Morrison’s home caught fire the same year she received the Nobel Prize (1993). About 120 firefighters from two towns responded to a fire that was destroying an ancient four-story Colonial home, according to Paul Wanamaker, the chief of the Nyack Fire Department.

Wanamaker informed Morrison that some of her writings had been lost in the fire, but she had no other information when Morrison went to assess the damage.

10. She held a designated chair at an Ivy League university, making her the first African-American to do so

Toni Morrison in the Blue Room by The White House from Wikimedia Commons

Morrison was the first person to hold a named chair at an Ivy League university, among other notable firsts. She was appointed the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of Humanities at Princeton University in New Jersey in 1987.

Toni Morrison has inspired so many individuals with her words, heart, and brains. Without her, the literary world undoubtedly would be a different one. Without Toni Morrison as an author, Oprah Winfrey stated in an interview that Oprah’s Book Club would not have existed.