In the latter incident, parents in San Bernadino, California sought to ban The Bluest Eye, citing the book’s scenes of rape and incest. Last year, a Southern California school board announced the reversal of its decision to remove “The Bluest Eye” from its core reading list for AP English Literature classes.
In 1997, Texas prisons considered “Paradise” too dangerous for their libraries because it might incite “strikes or riots.” ….
Since the publication of her first novel, “The Bluest Eye” in 1970, Morrison’s books have often come under fire. On October 28, 2021, Farah Jasmine Griffin, professor of African American and African diaspora studies and English literature at Columbia University, published an op-ed in the Washington Post that outlined the censorship battles over Morrison’s books. Given this, discussion of Toni Morrison’s work provides an important window into censorship and the role of literature in our society. In recent decades, multiple school districts around the country have witnessed attempts-both successful and unsuccessful-to ban works by Morrison, in some cases removing her books from English courses. Beyond writing and publishing, she led a successful career as an editor and helped promote many other African-American authors.ĭespite this legacy, the American Library Association has regularly included her works on its annual list of most banned and challenged books. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, becoming the first African-American woman to receive this prize. These works, in the words of the New York Times, “explored Black identity in America - and in particular the often crushing experience of Black women - through luminous, incantatory prose resembling that of no other writer in English.”Īmong numerous honors, Morrison was awarded the U.S. She is also one of its most censored.īefore her death in 2019, Morrison published 11 novels, including The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), Beloved (1987), and Paradise (1997). Toni Morrison is one of America’s most acclaimed writers. Reading One: Toni Morrison: Celebrated and Censored Questions for discussion follow each reading. In this lesson, students learn about the life and legacy of Toni Morrison and discuss how her 1987 book Beloved is both frequently taught and frequently subject to calls for censorship. Yet multiple school districts around the country have witnessed attempts-both successful and unsuccessful-to ban works by Morrison. Before her death in 2019, Morrison published 11 novels and received the Nobel Prize for Literature, as well as the U.S.
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