Posted on August 7, 2019 at 9:36 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

The tributes continue to pour in for author Toni Morrison, who died Monday at age eighty-eight.

Morrison is best known for Song of Solomon, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Beloved, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Chigozie Obioma, nominated for the Booker Prize for An Orchestra of Minorities, wrote in the Guardian that Morrison was one of the first two American authors he ever read.

“With the death of Morrison, many writers today feel like we have lost our literary mother,” he says in the essay.

Tayari Jones, author of the multiple-award-winning An American Marriage, expressed a similar respect for Morrison’s leadership by example.

“It feels as though she opens a door, but she also challenges you to walk through that door,” she told NPR’s Audie Cornish.

Jones joined several other notable writers, including Jesmyn Ward and Henry Louis Gates Jr., in paying respect to Morrison in the New York Times as well.

Praise also came from her contemporaries, like Alice Walker, who said: "We have lost a great writer whose extraordinary novels leave an indelible imprint on the consciousness of all who read them." 

And you can listen to essayist Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah discuss Morrison’s legacy below, in an NPR segment.

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Categories: Today in Books

Tagged As: Diversity, Obituary

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