Continuing our celebration of Black History Month in the US, this week, we are celebrating with a quote from an inspirational Black Nobel laureate, Toni Morrison.

Toni Morrison (1931-2019) was an American novelist, essayist and professor best known for being the first Black woman to win a Nobel Prize. 

Morrison was born and raised in the US state of Ohio. After completing high school, she attended Howard University to earn her bachelor's degree in English. She graduated from Cornell University with a master's degree in American Literature in 1957. Morrison began her career teaching English at university, later moving into the world of publishing, working as the first Black woman senior editor in the fiction department at Random House. 

Her first and second novels, The Bluest Eye (1970) and Sula (1973), were favourably reviewed, raising her profile in the world of literature and serving as a stepping stone for her later blossoming novelist career. She received national acclaim for her novel the Song of Solomon (1977) and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1987, her most celebrated novel, Beloved, was published, which earned her the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. This was followed by two similar pieces making up the Beloved Trilogy. In 1993 before the final novel in the Beloved Trilogy was published, Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming the first Black woman from any country to be awarded this honour.

Morrison held a Chair in the Humanities at Princeton University from 1989 until 2006, developing the Princeton Atelier, a programme created to bring together writers and performing artists. In 2012, President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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