Editing Toni Morrison (section)

=== ''Beloved'' trilogy and the Nobel Prize: 1987–1998 ===
[[File:Toni Morrison and sons.jpg|thumb|Morrison, with her sons Ford (left) and Slade (right) at their upstate New York home, between 1980 and 1987]]
In 1987, Morrison published her most celebrated novel, ''[[Beloved (novel)|Beloved]]''. It was inspired by the true story of an enslaved African-American woman, [[Margaret Garner]],<ref name=Rothstein>{{cite news | last=Rothstein | first=Mervyn | title=Toni Morrison, in Her New Novel, Defends Women |newspaper=[[The New York Times]]| date=August 26, 1987 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/01/11/home/14013.html | access-date=June 20, 2016}}</ref> whose story Morrison had discovered when 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.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.blackpast.org/aah/margaret-garner-incident-1856|title=Margaret Garner Incident (1856)|date=December 5, 2007|publisher=[[BlackPast.org|Black Past]]|first=Casey|last=Nichols|access-date=April 29, 2017}}</ref> Morrison's novel imagines the dead baby returning as a ghost, Beloved, to haunt her mother and family.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Mathieson|first=Barbara Offutt|date=1990|title=Memory and Mother Love in Morrison's ''Beloved''|jstor=26303963|journal=[[American Imago]]|volume=47|issue=1|pages=1–21|issn=0065-860X}}</ref>

''Beloved'' was a critical success and a bestseller for 25 weeks. ''[[The New York Times]]'' book reviewer [[Michiko Kakutani]] wrote that the scene of the mother killing her baby is "so brutal and disturbing that it appears to warp time before and after into a single unwavering line of fate".<ref name=Hevesi>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/01/nyregion/toni-morrison-s-novel-beloved-wins-the-pulitzer-prize-in-fiction.html|title=Toni Morrison's Novel ''Beloved'' Wins the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction|last=Hevesi|first=Dennis|date=April 1, 1988|newspaper=[[The New York Times]]|access-date=April 29, 2017}}</ref> Canadian writer [[Margaret Atwood]] wrote in a review for ''The New York Times'', "Ms. Morrison's versatility and technical and emotional range appear to know no bounds. If there were any doubts about her stature as a pre-eminent American novelist, of her own or any other generation, ''Beloved'' will put them to rest."<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/13/books/jaunted-by-their-nightmares.html|title=Jaunted By Their Nightmares |last=Atwood|first=Margaret|author-link=Margaret Atwood|date=September 13, 1987|newspaper=The New York Times|access-date=May 1, 2017}}</ref>

Some critics panned ''Beloved''. African-American conservative social critic [[Stanley Crouch]], for instance, complained in his review in ''[[The New Republic]]''<ref>{{cite magazine|url=http://rvannoy.asp.radford.edu/rvn/444/beloved.htm|title=Literary Conjure Woman|last=Crouch|first=Stanley|date=October 19, 1987|magazine=The New Republic|access-date=May 8, 2017}}</ref> that the novel "reads largely like a melodrama lashed to the structural conceits of the miniseries", and that Morrison "perpetually interrupts her narrative with maudlin ideological commercials".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.salon.com/control/1999/01/19/crouch_2/|title=The bull in the black-intelligentsia china shop|last=Alexander|first=Amy|author-link=Amy L. Alexander|date=January 19, 1999|website=[[Salon (website)|Salon]]|access-date=May 8, 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.thenewcanon.com/beloved.html|title=Beloved by Toni Morrison|last=Gioia|first=Ted|author-link=Ted Gioia|publisher=thenewcanon.com|access-date=May 8, 2017}}</ref>

Despite overall high acclaim, ''Beloved'' failed to win the prestigious [[National Book Award]] or the [[National Book Critics Circle Award]]. Forty-eight Black critics and writers,<ref>{{cite news | title=48 Black Writers Protest By Praising Morrison | last=McDowell | first=Edwin | work=The New York Times | date=January 19, 1988 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/19/books/48-black-writers-protest-by-praising-morrison.html | access-date=August 9, 2019}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://aalbc.com/tc/index.php?/topic/1615-writers-demand-recognition-for-toni-morrison-1988/|title='Writers Demand Recognition for Toni Morrison (1988)', June Jordan Houston A. Baker Jr. Statement|date=July 27, 2012 |via=AALBC.com's Discussion Boards}}</ref> among them [[Maya Angelou]], protested the omission in a statement that ''[[The New York Times]]'' published on January 24, 1988.<ref name="nobel" /><ref>{{cite news | title=Black Writers in Praise of Toni Morrison | work=The New York Times | date=April 8, 2018 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/01/11/home/15084.html | access-date=August 8, 2019 | department=Book Review}}</ref><ref name="glitters">{{cite news| last = Menand| first = Louis |author-link=Louis Menand| title = All That Glitters – Literature's global economy| magazine = The New Yorker| date = December 26, 2005| url = http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/12/26/051226crbo_books| access-date =June 11, 2007}}</ref> "Despite the international stature of Toni Morrison, she has yet to receive the national recognition that her five major works of fiction entirely deserve", they wrote.<ref name=Ghansah /> Two months later, ''Beloved'' won the [[Pulitzer Prize for Fiction]].<ref name=Hevesi /> It also won an [[Anisfield-Wolf Book Award]].<ref name="Anisfield" />

''Beloved'' is the first of three novels about love and African-American history, sometimes called the ''Beloved'' Trilogy.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6149.Beloved?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=lxA9AStsOO&rank=1|title=Beloved Trilogy #1 {{!}} Beloved
|publisher=goodreads.com|access-date=October 29, 2024}}</ref> Morrison said they are intended to be read together, explaining: "The conceptual connection is the search for the beloved – the part of the self that is you, and loves you, and is always there for you."<ref name=":3" /> The second novel in the trilogy, ''[[Jazz (novel)|Jazz]]'', came out in 1992. Told in language that imitates the rhythms of jazz music, the novel is about a love triangle during the [[Harlem Renaissance]] in New York City. According to [[Lyn Innes]], "Morrison sought to change not just the content and audience for her fiction; her desire was to create stories which could be lingered over and relished, not 'consumed and gobbled as fast food', and at the same time to ensure that these stories and their characters had a strong historical and cultural base."<ref name="Lyn Innes, Guardian obituary">{{cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/aug/06/toni-morrison-obituary|title=Toni Morrison obituary|first=Lyn|last=Innes|author-link=Lyn Innes|newspaper=[[The Guardian]]|date=August 6, 2019}}</ref>

In 1992, Morrison also published her first book of literary criticism, ''[[Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination]]'' (1992), an examination of the African-American presence in White American literature.<ref name="Anisfield">{{cite web|url=http://www.anisfield-wolf.org/books/beloved/|title=Beloved|publisher=Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards |access-date=April 29, 2017}}</ref> (In 2016, ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine noted that ''Playing in the Dark'' was among Morrison's most-assigned texts on U.S. college campuses, together with several of her novels and her 1993 [[Nobel Prize]] lecture.)<ref>{{cite magazine |last1=Johnson |first1=David |title=These Are the 100 Most-Read Female Writers in College Classes |url=https://time.com/4234719/college-textbooks-female-writers/ |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |date=February 25, 2016}}</ref> Lyn Innes wrote in the ''[[The Guardian|Guardian]]'' obituary of Morrison, "Her 1990 series of Massey lectures at Harvard were published as Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992), and explore the construction of a 'non-white Africanist presence and personae' in the works of [[Edgar Allan Poe|Poe]], [[Nathaniel Hawthorne|Hawthorne]], [[Herman Melville|Melville]], [[Willa Cather|Cather]] and [[Ernest Hemingway|Hemingway]], arguing that 'all of us are bereft when criticism remains too polite or too fearful to notice a disrupting darkness before its eyes'."<ref name="Lyn Innes, Guardian obituary" />

Before the third novel of the ''Beloved'' Trilogy was published, Morrison was awarded the [[Nobel Prize in Literature]] in 1993. The citation praised her as an author "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality".<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/morrison-facts.html|title=Toni Morrison – Facts|publisher=nobelprize.org|access-date=April 29, 2017}}</ref> She was the first Black woman of any nationality to win the prize.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/08/06/toni-morrison-nobel-prize-terrifying-staircase-king-who-rescued-her/|title=Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize, a terrifying staircase and the king who rescued her|last=Brockell|first=Gillian|date=August 6, 2019|newspaper=[[The Washington Post]]|access-date=August 6, 2019}}</ref> In her acceptance speech, Morrison said: "We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives."<ref>{{Cite web|date=October 30, 2020|title=Toni Morrison's Personal Library Is Now Available to Purchase|url=https://www.galeriemagazine.com/toni-morrison-library-for-sale/|first=Michelle Sinclair|last=Colman|access-date=November 16, 2020|website=Galerie|language=en-US}}</ref>

In her Nobel lecture, Morrison talked about the power of storytelling. To make her point, she told a story. She spoke about a blind, old, Black woman who is approached by a group of young people. They demand of her, "Is there no context for our lives? No song, no literature, no poem full of vitamins, no history connected to experience that you can pass along to help us start strong? ...&nbsp;Think of our lives and tell us your particularized world. Make up a story."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/morrison-lecture.html|title=Toni Morrison – Nobel Lecture|publisher=nobelprize.org|date=December 7, 1993|access-date=April 29, 2017}}</ref>

In 1996, the [[National Endowment for the Humanities]] selected Morrison for the [[Jefferson Lecture]], the U.S. federal government's highest honor for "distinguished intellectual achievement in the humanities".<ref name="jefflect">[http://www.neh.gov/whoweare/jefflect.html Jefferson Lecturers] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111020121101/http://www.neh.gov///whoweare/jefflect.html |date=October 20, 2011 }} at NEH Website. Retrieved January 22, 2009.</ref> Morrison's lecture, entitled "The Future of Time: Literature and Diminished Expectations",<ref>Morrison, Toni, "The Future of Time, Literature and Diminished Expectations," reprinted in Toni Morrison, ''What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction'' (University Press of Mississippi, 2008), {{ISBN|978-1604730173}}, pp. 170–186.</ref> began with the aphorism: "Time, it seems, has no future." She cautioned against the misuse of history to diminish expectations of the future.<ref>Hawkins, B. Denise (June 16, 2007), [https://diverseeducation.com/article/7533/ "Marvelous Morrison – Toni Morrison – Award-Winning Author Talks About the Future From Some Place in Time"], ''Diverse Online'' (formerly ''Black Issues in Higher Education''). {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120512124851/http://www.diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/printer_7533.shtml |date=May 12, 2012}}.</ref> Morrison was also honored with the 1996 [[National Book Award#Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters|National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters]], which is awarded to a writer "who has enriched our literary heritage over a life of service, or a corpus of work".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nationalbook.org/amerletters.html|title=National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, Presenter of National Book Awards|publisher=Nationalbook.org|access-date=May 30, 2012}}</ref>

The third novel of her ''Beloved'' Trilogy, ''[[Paradise (Morrison novel)|Paradise]]'', about citizens of an all-Black town, came out in 1997. The following year, Morrison was on the cover of ''[[Time (magazine)|Time]]'' magazine, making her only the second female writer of fiction and second Black writer of fiction to appear on what was perhaps the most significant U.S. magazine cover of the era.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://bookriot.com/2013/08/14/a-brief-history-of-novelists-on-the-cover-of-time/|title=A Brief History of (Novelists on the Cover of) Time|last=Corman|first=Josh|date=August 14, 2013|website=Book Riot|access-date=April 29, 2017}}</ref>