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In Memoriam: Toni Morrison
Categories: HBW

The Project on the History of Black Writing mourns the death of the incomparable Toni Morrison. A literary icon and our friend, we have long admired her brilliance, literary genius, and love of our culture. There are simply no words to describe the impact Toni Morrison has made on all of us as readers, writers, and researchers. Equally there are no words to fully capture the imprint she has left on our collective identity. Join us in lifting up her memory and reflecting on her legacy.
Toni Morrison Revisited: A Collection of HBW Posts on Morrison
Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye: Black Girls as Central Figures and escaping essentialist representations.
Playing in the Sunlight: Colors of Imagination, or Toni Morrison Revisited on her prose in Playing the Dark.
Toni Morrison: A Full Circle in Motion and In Toni Morrison’s Latest Novel, Black (Children’s) Lives Matter, on Morrison’s extraordinary storytelling and her novel God Help the Child (2015).
Language Matters, a national educational and service initiative of the Toni Morrison Society. Established in 2001, it provided opportunities for interactive dialogue among school teachers and between teachers and scholars, and to create appropriate instructional materials for those teaching imaginative literature, especially the novels of Toni Morrison in secondary school classrooms. Language Matters was coordinated by HBW and was a three-time NEH grant recipient.

Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, a documentary film
25 Toni Morrison Quotes that Left Me Shook
Princeton’s reflection on Toni Morrison, Nobel-winning author and emeritus Princeton faculty member
NPR on Toni Morrison, Whose Soaring Novels Were Rooted In Black Lives
Toni Morrison, ‘Beloved’ Author and Nobel Laureate



Morrison mural in Paris, unveiled during Legion of Honor Award festivities in 2010. Graffiti artist unknown.

Morrison unveiling a “Bench by the Road” commemorating the abolition of slavery in Paris, France, 2010.

Morrison with Richard Danielpour, Hank and Billye and Billye Aaron, New York premiere of opera “Margaret Garner,” 2005

Credit: Jack Mitchell/Getty Images