Chloe Anthony Morrison Essay

Chloe Anthony Morrison was known as Toni Morrison, and was the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Chloe Anthony Wofford was born on February 18, 1931, in a small town at Lorain, Ohio. She was the second of four children of Ramah and George Wofford. Her parents had moved to Ohio from the South to escape racism and hoped to find a better environment to raise their kids without violence. Despite this great movement, as she grew up she began to experience racial discrimination. In the 1930s, the Great depression became overwhelming issues for the family. Toni’s father George Wofford supported his family by often working three jobs in order support his family. He was known to be the diligent and stately man who took a great deal of pride in the quality of his work. Her mother Ramah Wofford was a religious woman and she often sang in the choir. Morrison childhood played an important role in her life because it inspired her writing career.

Growing up Morrison's childhood was filled with African American folklore, music, rituals, and myths which accompany her eternally. Her family was, as Morrison says, "intimate with the supernatural" ( according to http://www.math.buffalo.edu ). This quote demonstrates that Morrison family frequently used visions and

signs to predict the future. It also depicts that her family was very good in the interpretation of the signs. On the other hand, the quote can also depict that her ancestors were very religious because her mom was a choir singer. So her family begin “intimating with the supernatural” shows that they were very religious and had a great relationship with God. Storytelling played an important role in the Wofford family, for both children and adult. Morrison sees her writing evolve much like storytelling did in the past. It reminds people of their heritage and shows them who they in their community. She uses her childhood memories to help her start writing just like Wiesel. Her real story, therefore, is often included in her novels. Toni Morrison's writing was also greatly influenced by her family and ancestors. “Her grandparents had to relocate from to Ohio During the national movement of blacks out of the South is known as the Great Migration. Her mother's parents, Aredelia and John Solomon Willis, after leaving their farm in Alabama, moved to Kentucky, and then to Ohio. They placed extreme value in the education of their children and themselves” (http://www.gradesaver.com). John Solomon Willis influence Toni because he had this faith in him that represent Toni. John Willis taught himself to read and his stories became the inspiration for Morrison's third novel Song of Solomon(1977). This illustrates that Morrison ancestors or background influenced who she is today as a writer.
Morrison was incredibly gifted, she learned to read at an early age and tried to do her best in school. Morrison, who attended Hawthorne Elementary School, was the only African-American in her 1st-grade class. As a black kid in her class, she was the only student who began school with the ability to read. Morrison vast knowledge enabled her to assist other students in reading especially student who was new America. According to https://ahittler.wordpress.com, “ Her parents' desire to protect their child from the racist environment of the South succeeded in many respects: racial prejudice was less of a problem in Lorain, Ohio than it would have been in the South, and Chloe Wofford played with a racially diverse group of friends when she was young”. Her parent thought the only way for their kids to be professional was to move away from racial discrimination. But however, she began to experience racial discrimination as she became older.
She graduated with honors in 1949 and went to Howard University in Washington located in D.C. According to http://www.umich.edu,“At Howard, she majored in English and minored in classics, and was actively involved in theater arts through the Howard University Players”. With her hard work, she graduated from Howard in 1953 with a Bachelor degree in English. She then decided to change her name to Toni, which was a shortened term of her middle name. She also went to receive her Master's degree in English from Cornell in 1955. After a teaching at Texas Southern University, she then returned to Howard University and met her husband Harold Morrison. These two couples got married and then divorce in 1964. Before divorcing Toni and Harold Morrison had two sons. Between that time Toni decision to write her first novel, The Bluest Eye.
In 1964, she wants to work at Syracuse, as an associate editor at Random House.

As a single mother, she did not give up on her goals, she continued to write fiction. In 1967, she was promoted to senior editor and was transferred to New York City. In 1970, she next published her first novel the Bluest Eye. The moral of the story was about a young girl who believes that the only way to be beautiful was to change her eye color. Between the year 1971 and 1972, Morrison worked as a professor of English at the State University of New York and also worked on Sula, a novel about a defiant woman and her relation to black females, which was published in

1973.
In 1976 and 1977, Morrison worked as a visiting lecturer at Yale where she worked on her next novel, Song of Solomon. This novel was fully in depth with its analysis of black male characters. According to Wikipedia.com it stated that “ As with Sula, Morrison wrote the novel while holding a teaching position, continuing her work as an editor for Random House, and raising her two sons”. Song of Solomon was published in 1977. In 1981, Morrison published Tar Baby, this novel focus on a relationship between a man and a woman. In 1983, unfortunately, she left Random House and attempted to take a position at the State University of New York at Albany.
Beloved, the novel was considered by many people to be Morrison's masterpiece, during 1987. Beloved tells the story of an emancipated slave woman named Sethe who was haunted by the ghost of the daughter she killed. The novel is an ambitious attempt to wrestle with slavery and the power of its legacy. According to http://aalbc.com, “Dedicated to the tens of millions of slaves who died in the trans-Atlantic journey, Beloved could be called a foundation story (like Genesis and Exodus) for black America”. This can be connected to Genesis and Exodus story because according to the bible Moses led the Israelites to freedom from slavery under Pharaoh of Egypt, which the writer was trying to indicate. Beloved became bestseller in town and she later received a Pulitzer Prize.
In 1987, Toni became the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of Humanities at Princeton University. She became first African American female writer at Ivy League University. She also published her novel Jazz in 1992, along with a nonfiction book. The next year she became one of the eight women as well as the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in America. Also 1998 the published of her seventh novel, which was called Paradise. By her hard work, she became a major architect in creating a literary language for African Americans. Today, Morrison continues to be one of the better literature storytellers. She also published her new novel Home in 2012. Even though she had grown older, she still writes novels the novel in her elderly age such as God help the Child published in 2015. The moral of the story was about a skinned black woman who works in the cosmetics industry.
In conclusion, Morrison’s biography and literature are being continually taught in school. People are constantly interested in her work because many of her stories and experiences played a considerable role in their life. Therefore, Morrison background played an important role in her life because she wrote most of her novels on black people and society.