Today is celebrated American writer Toni Morrison’s 85th birthday. Throughout her 46-year career, the author has received top honors in the humanities, from the Pulitzer Prize in 1988 for her novel Beloved to the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama in 2012. In 1993, she became the first Black woman (and the last American, as of today) to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.But Morrison's true impact can't be fully measured in prizes and accolades. Though her books are works of fiction by genre, they are also gritty, evocative explorations of race, gender, identity, and class. Her works are some of the most rich and compelling testaments to the lived experience of Black Americans, from the height of slavery through the Civil War and the Great Depression to today.
Morrison has always been vocal about how her identity has informed her writing. "I really think the range of emotions and perceptions I have had access to as a Black person and as a female person are greater than those of people who are neither," she said. "So it seems to me that my world did not shrink because I was a Black female writer. It just got bigger.” In honor of Morrison, here are 24 powerful, inspiring quotes about Black womanhood.
— Misty Copeland, the first African American woman to become a Principal Dancer with the American Ballet Theatre
— India Arie, singing on her 2009 track "Video"
— Janet Jackson, accepting a career achievement award at the 2004 Soul Train Music Awards
— Shonda Rhimes, on the unrealistic conversations people expect from Black characters on TV, in the New York Times in 2013
— bell hooks, the feminist author and activist, wrote in 2013's remembered rapture: the writer at work
— Mary J. Blige, on overcoming self-hate, in a 2013 interview with Black Heritage Radio
— Amandla Stenberg, on encouraging young Black girls to speak up
— Kerry Washington, during a conversation with Don Cheadle about racism and sexism in Hollywood
— Maya Angelou, speaking at an event for the Organization of Women Writers of Africa in 2011
— Jada Pinkett Smith, at BET's Black Girls Rockawards show last year
— Ava DuVernay, receiving an award at Black Girls Rock! last year
— June Jordan, Caribbean-American writer and activist, in her 1981 bookCivil Wars
— Janelle Monáe, on Queen Latifah's talk show in 2014
— Cicely Tyson, renowned actress, told Gayle King on CBS This Morning
— Danai Gurira, the Walking Dead actress, inElle
— Maya Angelou, in her classic I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
— Oprah Winfrey, in a 1991 interview
— Melissa Harris-Perry, the writer, scholar, and MSNBC host, in her book Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America
— Alfre Woodard, in a comedic but powerful Funny or Die video called "Black Women Run Hollywood"
— Ava DuVernay, to Interview in 2012
— Maya Angelou, in a 1973interviewwith Bill Moyers
— Audre Lorde, the writer and women's rights activist in a 1988 piece called "I Am Your Sister: Black Women Organizing Across Sexualities"
— Toni Morrison, talking to the New York Times in 1987 about embracing the label of "Black female writer"
— Zora Neale Hurston, author of Their Eyes Were Watching God, in 1928's "How It Feels to Be Colored Me"
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