Morrison

On March 30, 1981, Toni Morrison, the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature, was featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine. She was interviewed in conjunction with the release of her novel on black-white relations, Tar Baby.

Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. She majored in English at Howard University in Washington. She received a master's degree from Cornell University. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. It drew on childhood experiences.

Her best-selling novel Beloved, published in 1987, was based on the story of Margaret Garner, an escaped Kentucky slave who attempted to kill her children rather than allow them to be returned to slavery. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction the following year. Morrison received the Nobel Prize in 1993.

Rebecca Goodman

E-mail rgoodman@enquirer.com or call (513) 768-8361.