Toni Morrison, author of five (combined) list books, 1931-2019

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Toni Morrison, author of five (combined) list books, 1931-2019

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1BentleyMay
Aug 7, 2019, 9:28 am

From the New York Times:
Toni Morrison, the Nobel laureate in literature whose best-selling works explored black identity, “enlarged the American imagination in ways we are only beginning to understand,” one of our book critics writes in an appraisal, adding: “You sensed in Morrison’s fiction the sweep and brooding power of Ralph Ellison, the complicated warmth and riddling wit of Zora Neale Hurston, the explosive intellect of James Baldwin and the bent-shovel cadences of William Faulkner. Yet Morrison’s idiosyncratic music was her own. She was a colossus of 20th-century fiction.”

Obituary: Ms. Morrison, who died on Monday at 88, wrote 11 novels as well as children’s books and essay collections.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/books/toni-morrison-dead.html?te=1&nl=mor...

I have read 3 of 5: Sula, Beloved, and Jazz. I would like to revisit Beloved someday. I read it a long time ago, perhaps when it first came out in paperback. I remember that I felt there was a lot of symbolism in the writing that I didn't understand.

2japaul22
Aug 7, 2019, 10:24 am

Toni Morrison is one of the contemporary authors on the list that deserves without a doubt to be there. I think her books will still be read for generations to come. I find her writing to be poetic, challenging, dramatic, and profound.

I've read 4 of the five books on the list: Beloved, The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, and Sula. I have Jazz left to read.

She is an author whose complete works I would like to read. I have a few on my shelf that are not on the list that I will probably read before Jazz.

3amaryann21
Aug 7, 2019, 11:53 am

I have read all that are on the list and I'm a better person for it. I don't say that about many authors, but as a white woman, Morrison's writing gave me insight to a world I can't experience on my own. Her voice is so powerful and the tributes to her that I've heard and read over the last couple days are a testament to how many people she touched. Her legacy lives on.

4gypsysmom
Aug 8, 2019, 11:38 am

>1 BentleyMay: Like you I read Beloved long ago. My first thought on reading of her death was that I had to go back and reread it. I saw the movie also but that was probably when it came out in 1998 so that's 20 years ago too.
>3 amaryann21: That makes me want to read all of her books.

5amaryann21
Aug 8, 2019, 3:57 pm

>4 gypsysmom: That makes my heart glad. I can't think of a writer who made more of an impact on my worldview with multiple books.