America Mourns the Passing of Toni Morrison, a ‘National Treasure’

“We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” Toni Morrison

For almost half a century, Toni Morrison has been known for wielding words like a weapon to awaken the sleeping conscience, sowing them as seeds to help the stunted grow and skillfully mixing them as a balm to help the wounded heal.

And though she may be gone, because of the words she left behind, she will never be silent.

Morrison, 88, died Monday night at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, publisher Alfred A. Knopf said.

Her family released this statement to the media: In a statement released by Princeton University, where she taught, the author’s family said that after a short illness, “our adored mother and grandmother, Toni Morrison, passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends. She was an extremely devoted mother, grandmother, and aunt who reveled in being with her family and friends,” the statement said. “The consummate writer who treasured the written word, whether her own, her students or others, she read voraciously and was most at home when writing. Although her passing represents a tremendous loss, we are grateful she had a long, well lived life.”

On Tuesday, authors and artists, editors and historians as well as other luminaries pay tribute to the American author. They were joined by thousands of her readers on Facebook and Twitter who spoke of her lasting impact on their lives.

“In the beginning was the Word. Toni Morrison took the word and turned it into a Song of Solomon, Sula, Beloved, Mercy, Paradise, Love and more,” Oprah Winfrey tweeted. “She was a magician with language, who understood the Power of words. She used them to roil us, to wake us, to educate us and help us grapple with our deepest wounds and try to comprehend them. She was Empress-Supreme among writers. Long may her WORDS reign!”

Morrison, who was best known for her bestselling and Pulitzer Prize winning novel Beloved, has been a guide to others said Historian Henry Louis Gates Jr.

“For nearly half a century, we have been looking to Toni Morrison for guidance — to help us think, through literature, as we find our way through the world. With grace and wisdom, she respected, represented and rendered the beauty and complexity of the black experience,” Gates said, according to The New York Times.

Born Chloe Ardelia Wofford on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. She became a Catholic when she was 12 years-old and was baptized as Anthony. She then gained the nickname, Toni. An avid reader, Morrison was a fan of Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy. She grew up listening to her parents telling traditional African American folktales and ghost stories.

Before she wrote her first novel, Morrison was an editor who sought and found new voices, diverse voices – bringing black literature into the mainstream. She became Random House’s first black woman senior editor in the fiction department.

Among the books she worked on was Contemporary African Literature, a compilation of works that included contributions from Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe and South African playwright Athol Fugard. She also fostered a new generation of African American authors before taking her place among them.

Still, one of her best sellers was “The Black Book,” an anthology of artifacts that documents black life in America from the time of slavery to the 1970s. It included slave auction notices, lynching photos, blackface advertisements and a clipping from an 1856 newspaper, according to the Los Angeles Times.

It told the story of Margaret Garner, a runaway. As she was about to be captured, Garner killed her three children, believing death was preferable to captivity.

Morrison wondered what could lead a mother to commit such a crime. She answered that question with her bestselling novel about the legacy of slavery, Beloved, according to the LA Times.

But it wasn’t her first work.

“Toni was already 39 when she published her first novel, and she knew what she was doing,” Robert Gottlieb at Knopf said, according to The New York Times. “One of the remarkable qualities of “The Bluest Eye” is its calm confidence, “Sula” was perfect in structure and tone — like a superb sonnet. “Song of Solomon” was an explosion of energy and daring. “Beloved” was simply a masterpiece. And so, it went.”

Gottlieb would go on to edit most of Morrison’s novels. She also wrote Tar Baby, Jazz, A Mercy, Home and God Help the Child.

She also wrote children’s literature with the younger of her two sons, Slade Morrison, who died of pancreatic cancer in 2010 when he was 45. They include: The Big Box, The Book of Mean People, Peeny Butter Fudge and Please, Louise.

Morrison obtained her Bachelors of Arts from Howard University in 1953 and Masters of Arts degree from Cornell University two years later. She taught English at Texas Southern University in Houston and then at Howard, inspiring others.

She became the first black woman of any nationality to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, which she obtained in 1993. And when Morrison was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, then-President Barack Obama said, “Toni Morrison’s prose brings us that kind of moral and emotional intensity that few writers ever attempt.”

After learning of her death, he shared a picture of her sitting in a chair in the White House, smiling as she looked up at him.

“Time is no match for Toni Morrison,” Obama said Tuesday on Facebook. “She sometimes toyed with it, warping and creasing it, bending it to her masterful will. In her life’s story, too, she treated time nontraditionally.

“Toni Morrison was a national treasure. Her writing was not just beautiful but meaningful – a challenge to our conscience and a call to greater empathy. She was as good a storyteller, as captivating, in person as she was on the page. And so even as Michelle and I mourn her loss and send our warmest sympathies to her family and friends, we know that her stories – that our stories- will always be with us, and with those who come after, and on and on, for all time.”

“What a gift to breathe the same air as her, if only for a while,” he tweeted.

 Author Tayari Jones said Morrison, “is the greatest chronicler of the American experience that we have ever known,” according to The New York Times. “Now that she is gone and we are facing a moral dilemma greater than any that I have seen in my lifetime, her Nobel acceptance speech is as haunting and urgent as ever. In that speech, she tells the story of an old woman who is taunted by a pack of boys who hold a bird. She is blind, but is known to have second sight, and they challenge her to tell her if the bird is alive or dead. The old woman says simply, ‘The bird is in your hands.’ And this in many ways could be her parting message to us now.”