Toni Morrison, Pulitzer Prize winning author and Nobel Laureate, has passed away at the age of 88-years-old.
Most famously known for novels Beloved , Song Of Solomon , and The Bluest Eye , Morrison tirelessly dedicated her career to chronicling the African American experience in all of its horror and triumph.
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Morrison’s publisher Knopf released a joint statement with her family.
The statement revealed that Morrison passed away in Montefiore Medical Center in New York on Monday night after falling suddenly ill.
“Our adored mother and grandmother,” the statement reads, “Although her passing represents a tremendous loss, we are grateful she had a long, well lived life.”
“We would like to thank everyone who knew and loved her, personally or through her work, for their support at this difficult time.”
“We ask for privacy as we mourn this loss to our family,” the statement continued.
Morrison originally began writing novels because the novels she felt she needed didn’t yet exist.
“I had two small children in a small place,” she told the New York Times in 1979, “and I was very lonely. Writing was something for me to do in the evenings, after the children were asleep.”
After winning the Pulitzer Pride, Morrison became the first black woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.
Even in her speech following the Pulitzer Prize win, Morrison used her powerful language to draw attention to the discriminatory violence her people faced every day:
Oppressive language [that] does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.
Morrison’s work and life will continue to inspire generations of writers and activists long after her passing.
“We die,” she continued in her Pulitizer Prize speech, “That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”
h/t: The Guardian
