Song of Solomon

In this celebrated novel, Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison created a new way of rendering the contradictory nuances of black life in America. Its earthy poetic language and striking use of folklore and myth established Morrison as a major voice in contemporary fiction. Song of Solomon begins with one of the most arresting scenes in our century's literature: a dreamlike tableau depicting a man poised on a roof, about to fly into the air, while cloth rose petals swirl above the snow-covered ground and, in the astonished crowd below, one woman sings as another enters premature labor. The child born of that labor, Macon (Milkman) Dead, will eventually come to discover, through his complicated progress to maturity, the meaning of the drama that marked his birth. Toni Morrison's novel is at once a romance of self-discovery, a retelling of the black experience in America that uncovers the inalienable poetry of that experience, and a family saga luminous in its depth, imaginative generosity, and universality. It is also a tribute to the ways in which, in the hands of a master, the ancient art of storytelling can be used to make the mysterious and invisible aspects of human life apparent, real, and firm to the touch.

One of the most celebrated writers of our time, Toni Morrison has become a distinctive literary voice in the 20th Century, and her works have become essential reading in the body of contemporary American fiction.<br><br>Toni Morrison was appointed Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Council of the Humanities at Princeton University in the Spring of 1989.<br><br>Ms. Morrison has degrees from Howard and Cornell Universities.  Among the universities where she has held teaching posts are Yale, Bard College and Rutgers.  The New York State Board of Regents appointed her to the Albert Schweitzer Chair in the Humanities at the State University of New York at Albany in 1984, a post she held until 1989.  In 1988 she was the Obert C. Tanner Lecturer at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Professor at Syracuse University.  In 1990 she delivered the Clark lectures at Trinity College, Cambridge, and the Massey Lectures at Harvard University.<br><br>Her six major novels, <b>The Bluest Eye</b>, <b>Sula</b>, <b>Song of Solomon</b>, <b>Tar Baby</b>, <b>Beloved</b>, and <b>Jazz</b>, have received extensive critical acclaim.  She received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977 for <b>Song of Solomon</b> and the 1988 Pulitzer prize for <b>Beloved</b>.  Both novels were chosen as the main selections for the Book-of-the-Month Club, in 1977 and 1987 respectively.  Her books of essays include <b>Playing in the Dark</b>, and her edited collection <b>Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power:</b> <b> Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality.</b>  Forthcoming from Pantheon Books in early 1997 is another edited collection, <b>Birth of a Nation'hood: Gaze, Script, and Spectacle in the O.J. Simpson Case</b>, edited with Claudia Brodsky Lacour.<br><br>Her first play, <b>Dreaming Emmett</b>, was commissioned by the New York State Writers Institute of the State University of New York (1985).  Meeting with favorable reviews, it drew audiences throughout New York and the entire Tri-State area.<br><br><b>Honey and Rue</b>, commissioned by Carnegie Hall for Kathleen Battle, with lyrics by Toni Morrison and music by Andre Previn, premiered in January 1992.<br><br>Ms. Morrison has received honorary degrees from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Sarah Lawrence, Oberlin, Dartmouth, Yale, Georgetown, Columbia, Brown, the University of Michigan, and Universite Paris 7-Denis Diderot.  She was also the first recipient of the Washington College Literary Award in 1987 and was New York State Governor's Arts Awardee in 1986.<br><br>Other prestigious awards include:  the Modern Language Association of America Commonwealth Award in Literature, 1989; Sara Lee Corporation Front Runner Award in Arts, 1989; Anisfield Wolf Book Award in Race Relations, 1988; the Cleveland Arts Prize in Literature in 1978; and the Distinguished Writer Award of 1978 from the American Academy of Art and Letters. <br><br>She was a senior editor at Random House for twenty years.<br><br>Toni Morrison is a founding member of the Academie Universelle Des Cultures (at the Louvre, Paris), a Trustee of the New York Public Library, a member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  She is a member of the Author's Guild where she served on the Guild Council and as Foundation Treasurer.  She served on the National Council of The Arts for six years and is a member of the Africa Watch and Helsinki Watch Committees on Human Rights.<br><br>In 1993 Ms. Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.