Toni Morrison

Biography

Toni Morrison’s (1931–2019) numerous awards include the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature, the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved, and a National Book Award for Song of Solomon. Her other books include the novel Love (Knopf, 2003) and the children’s book The Lion or the Mouse? (Scribner, 2003), the latest in a series of retellings of Aesop’s fables, co-authored with her son, Slade. Her work in VQR appeared as part of the book Remember, from Houghton Mifflin. Photo by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.

See Work

ESSAYS / Winter 2004

The Journey to School Integration

By Toni Morrison

Whenever I see sheets drying on the line or smell gumbo simmering on the stove, a flood of memories comes to me. In 1953 when I traveled in the rural South with a group of students, we received the generosity of strangers—African Americans...