"Beloved" author and 1988 Fiction winner Toni Morrison has died at the age of 88. In celebration of her life and work, read the report Pulitzer jurors wrote about her Prize-winning novel, available for the first time at Pulitzer.org.
Its unequivocal first sentence reads: "'Beloved' is a work of assured, immense distinction, destined to become an American classic."
Morrison was born in 1931 in Lorain, Ohio, and throughout her long career the highest awards for contributions to culture were bestowed upon her, from the Nobel Prize to the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In addition to "Beloved," which centers on an enslaved African-American woman and was inspired by the true story of Margaret Garner, Morrison penned 10 other novels: "The Bluest Eye" (1970); "Sula" (1973); "Song of Solomon" (1977); "Tar Baby" (1981); "Jazz" (1992); "Paradise" (1997); "Love" (2003); "A Mercy" (2008); "Home" (2012), and "God Help the Child" (2015). She was known for her editing and essay writing, as well as her teaching, and was a professor emerita at Princeton University.
Of "Beloved," New York Times critic and fellow Pulitzer winner Michiko Kakutani wrote:
"Beloved" possesses the heightened power and resonance of myth — its characters, like those in opera or Greek drama, seem larger than life and their actions, too, tend to strike us as enactments of ancient rituals and passions. To describe “Beloved” only in these terms, however, is to diminish its immediacy, for the novel also remains precisely grounded in an American reality — the reality of black history as experienced in the wake of the Civil War.
Upon her retirement in 2017, Kakutani included the novel on her list of her top reads of a 40 year career reviewing books.
Most recently, Morrison was the subject of a documentary film, "Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am," from director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.