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Life and Novels
of Toni Morrison
Made by Lavrenyuk Viktoria

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Who is Toni Morrison?
 Toni Morrison is an African American fiction writer. Her novels
became famous in the 1970s and 1980s. She has won
numerous awards for her work, most famously, a Nobel Prize in
Literature, a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and a Presidential Medal
of Freedom.

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Biography
 Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18,
1931 in Ohio. As a child she enjoyed storytelling and reading, so
it was assumed that she would do well in school. Her upbringing
inspired many of her novels

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Family life
 Her father was a sharecropper who moved north to become a
shipyard welder in order to provide a better life for his family. Her
mother taught her to be powerful, resourceful, and respectful
which fueled many of her maternal themes in her novels. She
heard stories of the past from her grandparents about growing
up in the South. She was the second of four children

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College and work
 Toni attended Howard University and received a BA in English in
1953. She received a Masters from Cornell in 1955. Afterwards
she taught at Texas Southern University in 1957 then returned to
teach at Howard University. She married a fellow faculty
member, Harold Morrison and had two children. They divorced
in 1964 and she began working as an editor

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Famous novels
 The Bluest Eye 1970
 Song of Solomon 1977
 Beloved 1987

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Themes in novels
 From her family she was taught to have a strong, black self
image which is prevalent in her novels. Maternal authority and
equality in marriage. Power in black community. African
American identity, shame, trauma, and family life.

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The Bluest Eye
 She wrote this book because she wanted to write a book that
didn’t exist at the time and she wanted it to be a book she would
want to read. This book was continued from a short story
Morrison had wrote earlier about an African American girl who
wanted blue eyes. The novel shows the problems of race and
class hierarchies related to “poor and black”. They have
internalized their inferior position from ‘white culture’ and do not
believe anything else (internalized racism)

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The Bluest Eye
 The main character, Pecola, goes through many traumas
including racial shaming, rejection and abuse from her mother,
sexual abuse from her alcoholic and violent father, and
scapegoating by members of the community. Pecola ends up
having to create an alternate identity because her true life is too
difficult to bear

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Context
 Her writings have inspired many African American women to
become writers. They have seen her success and know that
they can do it too. In school, unfortunately books written by
women and men of color rarely make it into curriculums and Toni
Morrison has been able to change that. Her novels allow every
person regardless of race a chance to learn about African
American culture and the struggles that are prevalent in
everyday life.