Toni Morrison

Pecola Breedlove, a young eleven-year-old black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dreams grow more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity.--from...

"The story of a Korean war veteran on a quest to save his younger sister"--

Milkman Dead was born shortly after a neighborhood eccentric hurled himself off a rooftop in a vain attempt at flight. For the rest of his life he, too, will be trying to fly. With this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as audaciously as Saul Bellow or Gabriel García Márquez. As she follows Milkman from his rustbelt city to the place of his family's origins, Morrison introduces an entire cast of strivers...

In this 1983 short story about race and the relationships that shape us through life, Twyla and Roberta, friends since childhood who are seemingly at opposite ends of every problem as they grow older, cannot deny the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them. Twyla and Roberta have known each other since they were eight years old, roommates in the St. Bonaventure shelter. After losing touch, they meet several times by accident. Seemingly...

In exchange for a bad debt, an Anglo-Dutch trader takes on Florens, a young slave girl, who feels abandoned by her slave mother and who searches for love--first from an older servant woman at her master's new home, and then from a handsome free blacksmith.

Arguably the most celebrated and revered writer of our time now gives us a new nonfiction collection--a rich gathering of her essays, speeches, and meditations on society, culture, and art, spanning four decades.00The Source of Self-Regard is brimming with all the elegance of mind and style, the literary prowess and moral compass that are Toni Morrison's inimitable hallmark. It is divided into three parts: the first is introduced by a powerful prayer...

Generation after generation, classic fables, folklore, and myth remain popular because they quicken the imagination of listeners of all ages. We, the creators of Who's Got Game?, were inspired by the wonder of Aaesop's fables -- their vitality, their endless demand for new interpretations. In our versions the original stories are opened up and their moralistic endings re-imagined: the victim might not lose; the timid get a chance to become strong;...

Who IS the foreigner? Am I the foreigner in my own home? Who decides? Such were the questions posed by renowned author Toni Morrison at her 2006 guest-curated exhibit at the Louvre, "The Foreigner's Home". There she invited several renowned artists whose work also dealt with the experience of cultural and social displacement to join her in a public discussion that Morrison herself had been pursuing through her own research and writing. This film...

Jamey Tortoise is smarter than anyone else and Jimi Hare is faster, but when a race is announced each consults a reporter about how to get what he really wants when and if he should win in this updated twist on the familiar fable.

Sula and Nel are born in the Bottom—a small town at the top of a hill. Sula is wild, and daring; she does what she wants, while Nel is well-mannered, a mamma’s girl with a questioning heart. Growing up they forge a bond stronger than anything, stronger even than the dark secret they have to bear. Strong enough, it seems, to last a lifetime—until, decades later, as the girls become women, Sula’s anarchy leads to a betrayal...