By Holly Hedge

With seven extraordinary novels and four major literary awards, including the 1988 Politer Prize and 1993 Nobel Prize under her belt, Toni Morrison is in the midst of a more than fulfilling career as a master novelist. Notables from Ralph Ellison to Angela Davis have been champions of her work declaring her one of the best writers ever. Morrison's prose, laced with soft traces of feminism can proudly compete with the highest praised novels out there.

To pick up a Toni Morrison book is to pick up a biography of a nation of people who have shaped the body of America since their exodus from Africa. To sit and read a Morrison book is be confronted with a painfully brilliant light. From this point, you can either squint, shut the book and remain ignorant, or you can step into this light and become educated like never before. This light I speak of is the truth.

In 1949 she left home to attend Howard University, where she was quickly disappointed by the overwhelming lack of middle-class morals. Coming from a working-class family she was surprised to learn that students were more interested in the social aspects of college rather than education. Although a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, Morrison stayed focused on her studies and became interested in theater. She then joined a drama group, the Howard University Players.

Later she transferred to Cornell University and went on to earn a master's degree in English in 1955. She taught introductory English at Texas Southern University from 1955 to 1957 and then at Howard University from 1957 to 1964. There she met and married Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect. The couple had two sons. They lived contently for six years and then divorced in 1964, mainly because of cultural differences that the couple couldn't adjust to. During her years at Howard, Morrison began to write fiction although she said she never really considered herself a writer. Soon after leaving the university she was an editor at Random House, first in Syracuse, New York, then in New York City. At night, after coming home from work, Morrison would spend time with her sons, Harold and Slade. After feeding and seeing the two off to bed, she would stay up late and write for relaxation. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye was an expansion of a short story she wrote for a writing group she attended.

As a single working mother, Morrison found little time for socializing or making friends. It was out of a need for companionship that she joined a creative writing group. As she united with other people who shared her interests she was able to weekly escape the loneliness resulting divorce. She decided one day to pick the piece back up, polish it and work it into a complete novel. After the story was turned down by several publishing companies, it was published in 1970, and she immediately won the attention as a promising writer from several critics and authors as well. Still not considering herself a writer Morrison was unknowingly on her way to a life of storytelling. Out of the Toni Morrison books I've had the opportunity to read, Jazz is my favorite.

Stylistically, it surpasses the boundaries of creativity. The improvisational style marks a Toni Morrison book is greatly elevated in this work. She doesn't just play with words, she recreates them. Jazz is a tale of post-slavery life and how it affects and sometimes encourages rage, lust, and hatred. In this book, a man, Joe Trace, cheats on his wife with a 18 year-old girl. After their short-lived affair, he shoots and kills the girl and his furious wife, Violet (called Violent by the neighbors and narrator) crashes the funeral and attempts to disfigure the young girls face with a knife. Serving as a backdrop to this passionate and powerful story is New York City (referred to only as the City in the book) and the colorful supporting characters in it who unknowingly shape an era. Jazz and blues are the forces that draw people away from a reality of struggle and disappointment.

A few highly recommended books for sale:      
•  Paradise (Oprah's Book Club) -- Toni Morrison; Paperback
•  The Big Box -- Toni Morrison, et al; Hardcover
•  Beloved -- Toni Morrison; Paperback

Other popular Morrison works include Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved (her 1987 Pulitzer Prize novel), Jazz and the long-awaited Paradise. Besides writing, Morrison has been recently working on rebuilding her house on the Hudson she lost to a fire in 1993. She was devastated to lose a home full of mammaries from the years past and has expressed how much she misses the little but irreplaceable things, such as old photographs of her sons and her. She thought long and hard about selling the house before she realized how difficult it would be to write books without the melody of the flowing water of the Hudson serving as a soundtrack to the early mornings she spent writing as the sun rose.

Morrison often compares writing in this era to writing while a war is taking place. Her refusal and fearlessness to sugarcoat the truth on the page is what I think makes her prose some of the best around. On writing she has said "I'm sometimes frightened of what I write, but I can't look away. I will not look away. That's the one place where I'm going to, you know, make eye contact. It's a free place for me. It's not always safe, but that's the one place where all my little vulnerabilities, and cowardice, cannot come to the surface."

I know that besides myself, countless other African-American female writers have been inspired and encouraged by Morrison's example to bring their writing out of hiding. As the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize for literature, she had broken down the barriers of communication between the critical reading public and those competing to communicate to them. I look forward to seeing Toni Morrison accomplish many astounding new feats in writing and in history. She is truly, dearly beloved.