Toni Morrison

See also: Morrison

Toni Morrison , of its true name Chloe Anthony Wofford , born the February 18th 1931 in Lorain (Ohio, the United States), is a Romancière, professeure in literature and American editor , prize winner of the Nobel Prize of literature in 1993. It was the eighth woman but also the first black woman and finally the author Afro-américain to only receive this distiction.

Its novels describe the misery of the Noirs to the the United States since the beginning of the 20th century and try, on the narrative level, to reconstitute of it fragment by fragment the memory lives, dense, and complex. Its work, with the style epic, vintage and rate/rhythm, juxtaposes a register of language supported to an oral, slang and métissée mode of expression, mingling in addition a minitieuse and realistic historical painting with the Esclavage and Ségrégationnisme étasunien S with narrative elements Irrationnel S, Fantastique S even Merveilleux, for the majority inherent in the field of the tale and the popular myths Afro-américains. It is the novel Beloved , whose French edition goes back to 1989, which made known Toni Morrison in France. But its American notoriety had come ten years earlier back-to-back in space from two novels: Sula (1973) and Song off Solomon (1977).

She currently lives with Princeton.

Biography

Born in a working-class family from four children, Toni Morrison is interested very early in the literature and is impassioned in particular for works of Jane Austen and Leon Tolstoï. It incrit with the University Howard in 1945 to study the literature and supports a thesis on the topic of the suicide at William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf in 1953 at the Cornell University. After its diploma, it starts a career of professor to the Université of Texas Southern, before then turning over to Howard (university " réservée" with the Blacks).

In 1958, it marries Howard Morrison, with which it will have two children. After its divorce in 1964, it settles with Syracuse then with New York and works as editor at Ramdon House. Responsible for the sector of the black literature, it contributes to its promotion, by in particular publishing the autobiographies of Mohammed Ali and Angela Davis and an anthology of black writers, The Black Book , in 1973. In parallel, she teaches English with the Université of State of New York, before obtaining a post of professor of literature to the Université of Princeton where she will remain in activity until in 2006.

She writes its first novel, The Bluest Eye , at the 39 years age. She obtains the Prix Pulitzer for Beloved in 1988 and receives the Nobel Prize of literature in 1993 for the whole of her work. The Swedish Académie wanted to thus reward that “which, in its novels characterized by a force visionary and a poetic great power, ressuscite an essential aspect of American reality. ”. In 2005, it is named doctor Honoris causa in Arts and Literature by the Université of Oxford. In 2006, the jury of the literary supplement of the NewYork Times devotes Beloved “better novel of these 25 last years” and in November of the same year, the Musée of Louvre makes of Morrison its guest of honor proposing a lecture program, meetings and conferences with auteure and its friends artists, writers or professors. Since 2002, it is also invested in the literature for children with his son Slade Morrison. It recently obtained a post office with the direction of the magazine The Nation .

Its fictions have almost all, for main character, of the generally martyrized women what was worth the label of " to him; écrivaine feminist " that it asserted forever, informant on this subject: “That would cant certain readers who could believe that I engaged in the writing of one tractor draws feminist. I do not subscribe to the patriarchate but I do not believe that it should be supplanted by a matriarchy. I think that it is an equitable point of law and open doors on all sorts of thing”.

With the the United States, the remarks of Morrison relating to Bill Clinton made great noise when it qualified this one of “first American black President”, explaining its idea by the fact that “Clinton shows all the characteristics of the black citizen: a single-parent hearth, a very modest origin, a childhood in the Working class, a great knowledge of the saxophone and a love of the Junk food worthy of a boy of the Arkansas. ”. This opinion was adopted by the supporters of Clinton in particular to the electoral Congress of the American Blacks (in English: " The Congressionnal Black Caucus": the CBC) or on the contrary turned in derision by its detractors. The republican and preserving organizer Rush Limbaugh often refers, in a sarcastic way, with the former president in these terms.

Its novel more known and more sold: Beloved , was adapted to the cinema in 1998 by Jonathan Demme with Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover and Thandie Newton in the main roles.

Novels

1970 : The Bluest Eye (Holt, Rinehart & Winston). French translation: the most blue eye , 1994
1973: Sula (Knopf). French translation: 1992
1977 : Song off Solomon (Knopf). French translation: song of Solomon , 1996
1981: Tar Baby (Knopf). French translation: 1996
1987 : Beloved (Knopf). French translation: 1989
1992 : Jazz (Knopf). French translation: 1998
1998 : Paradise . French translation: Paradise , 1994
2003: Coils . French translation: 2004

Tests

1992 : Playing in the Dark-Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (Harvard University Near)
1992: Racing Justice, Engendering Power: Essays one Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas and the Others one the Constructing off Social Reality (Chatto and Windus)

Operas

1986 : Dreaming Emmet

Literature for child (with Slade Morrison)

Books Co-signed with his/her son Slade Morrison.

2003 the Cicada or the ant (Who' S Got Range?: The Ant gold the Grasshopper), fable adapted of Ésope and illustrated by Pascal Lemaître,
2003 the Lion or the mouse (Who' S Got Range?: The Lion gold the Foam?)

External bonds

“See as one never sees”, maintenance between Pierre Bourdieu and Toni Morrison, Vacarme , n°6, winter 1997/98.
Images of black America in Beloved de Toni Morrison: the representation in question, study of the stylistic devices to represent the drama and the release of slavery with the African-Americans.

References

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