Toni Morrison, First Black Woman Writer to Win Nobel, Dies

  • Her novels displayed ‘visionary force and poetic import’
  • She wrote ‘Beloved,’ ‘Song of Solomon,’ ‘The Bluest Eye’
Toni Morrison in her downtown Manhattan apartment on Feb. 2, 2004.Photographer: Jean-Christian Bourcart/Getty Images
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Toni Morrison, the first black woman to win a Nobel Prize in Literature for her novels depicting the struggles of black Americans living in a white society ridden with racial discrimination, has died. She was 88.

She died Monday at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, according to a statement from Paul Bogaards, a spokesman for her publisher, Alfred A. Knopf. The cause was complications from pneumonia.