Toni Morrison

Chloe Wofford became Toni Morrison by chance: childhood nickname and ex-husband's surname. It was Toni Morrison who won the Nobel Prize, and whose Beloved has been ranked as the top novel of the last 25 years. But there is more than just the dichotomy of real and pen names. There is the dichotomy of polemic and literary writer.

Morrison writes—more and more consciously, it seems—for posterity. Having once spearheaded the elevation of black women in culture—Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, Oprah—she now finds herself struggling to cut them loose, to admit at long last what she’s always believed: that she’s not only the first, but the best. That she belongs as much with Faulkner and Joyce and Roth as she does with that illustrious sisterhood. That she will pass the test that begins only after Chloe Wofford is gone, and Toni Morrison is all that’s left.

Boris Kachka's profile of Morrison in New York—Who Is the Author of Toni Morrison?—will make you pull down a Morrison book or two from the shelf.
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