Pictured are Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Toni Morrison (wearing braids), Ohio 9th Congressional District Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, who is the longest serving woman in congress, and former president Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com -NEW YORK-The nation is mourning the death of iconic writer Toni Morrison, the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, which she won in 1993.
Born in Lorain, Ohio into a working class family and the second of four children, Morrison passed away Monday in New York after a short illness, her publicist said in a statement.
She was 88, and never married.
“Toni Morrison passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends,” the statement said. “She was most at home when writing.”
Her career spanned some 60 years.
An American novelist, essayist, poet, Random House editor, teacher and professor emeritus at Princeton University, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award in 1988 for 'Beloved' (1987), a story set during the Civil War and inspired by a slave, the book later adopted into a Hollywood movie directed by Jonathan Demme and starring Oprah, Thandie Newton, and Danny Glover.
Morrison graduated from Lorain High School, an elementary school in the city named in her honor, and went on to earn a bachelor's degree in English from Howard University and a master's degree in American literature from Cornell University in 1955.
U.S. Rep Mary Kaptur, the longest serving woman in congress and a Toledo, Ohio Democrat whose 9th congressional district extends to Cleveland and includes parts of Lorain County, which includes the city of Lorain, Ohio where Morrison was born, called the famed Black author Ohio's literature queen.
"Toni Morrison was Ohio's first lady of literature," said Rep. Kaptur. "The pride of Lorain, she gave voice to millions of people who needed one - not just in Ohio and not just in the United States, but around the world."
The congresswoman told Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com in a statement that Morrison had an "exquisite ability as a storyteller and novelist that was forged in her experience as an African-American girl born in the depths of the Great Depression and almost literally in the shadows of a steel mill."
Notable Blacks, including Shondra Rhimes, Beyonce, Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama, also spoke on Morrison's death, Obama saying in a tweet that the country has lost a great storyteller and prolific writer
"Toni Morrison was a national treasure, and a good storyteller, and she was captivating in person," tweeted Obama, who awarded her the Presidential Metal of Freedom in 2012 when he was president, the nation's first Black president.
Obama said Morrison's writings represent "a beautiful and meaningful challenge to our conscience and our moral imagination."
As a book editor she published activist Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali, among others.
When she won the Nobel Prize in 1993 she held an endowed chair at Princeton University, where she was teaching at the time.
She was 39-years-old when she published her first novel in 1970, the 'Bluest Eye,' set in Lorain. Ohio and the story of a Black girl who grows up during the Great Depression, her novels in general focused on racism, sexism, slavery, Black empowerment and American history.
Because of its references to race, and the controversial topics of child molestation and incest conservatives have repeatedly tried to ban the novel from schools and libraries.
Other books by Morrison include 'Song of Solomon,' 'Tar Baby', 'Sula,' and 'Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power, essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas."
Though she was a feminist in her own right through her works and stances on Civil and women's rights, she shunned the term feminist as a stereotypical label for women.
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief at Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper and Black blog. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Coleman is an experienced Black political reporter who covered the 2008 presidential election for the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio and the presidential elections in 2012 and 2016 As to the one-on-one interview by Coleman with Obama CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
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