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Beloved, Source of Self-Regard, Bluest Eye, Recitatif, Sula, and Song of Solomon covers

The Official Website for
Toni Morrison

WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE AND PULITZER PRIZE

Sula by Toni Morrison

Sula is wild, and daring; she does what she wants, while Nel is well-mannered, a mamma’s girl with a questioning heart. Growing up they forge a bond stronger than anything, stronger even than the dark secret they have to bear. Strong enough, it seems, to last a lifetime—until, decades later, as the girls become women, Sula’s anarchy leads to a betrayal that may be beyond forgiveness. 

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

Masterful, richly textured, bittersweet, and vital, Sula is a modern masterpiece about love and kinship, about living in an America birthed from slavery. Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison gives life to characters who struggle with what society tells them to be, and the love they long for and crave as Black women. Most of all, they ask: When can we let go? What must we hold back? And just how much can be shared in a friendship?

Listen to an Audio Sample from Sula, read by Toni Morrison

The Source of Self-Regard by Toni Morrison
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Here is the Nobel Prize winner in her own words: a rich gathering of her most important essays and speeches, spanning four decades that "speaks to today’s social and political moment as directly as this morning’s headlines” (NPR).

These pages give us her searing prayer for the dead of 9/11, her Nobel lecture on the power of language, her searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., her heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. She looks deeply into the fault lines of culture and freedom: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, “black matter(s),” human rights, the artist in society, the Afro-American presence in American literature. And she turns her incisive critical eye to her own work (The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, Paradise) and that of others.

An essential collection from an essential writer, The Source of Self-Regard shines with the literary elegance, intellectual prowess, spiritual depth, and moral compass that have made Toni Morrison our most cherished and enduring voice.

Listen to an Audio Sample from The Source of Self-Regard, read by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

About Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is the author of eleven novels and three essay collections. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 the Nobel Prize in Literature. She died in 2019.

Photo © Deborah Feingold via Getty Images.

Events

May 7 2025 (Wed)
Norman Rockwell Museum
Readings at Rockwell: Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif” read by Sandra Seoane-Seri
In partnership with The Mount, the Norman Rockwell Museum presents Readings at Rockwell, featuring local actors reading stories by writers highlighted in Anita Kunz’s exhibition Original Sisters.
6:00 PM EST
May 10 2025 (Sat)
Stanley Museum of Art 160 West Burlington Street, Iowa City, IA 52242
NEA Big Read | Discussion of "Beloved" with DK Nnuro (Pages 281 - 324)
Join us for four discussions of Toni Morrison's Beloved and the exhibition it's a fine thing, led by the Stanley’s curator of special projects and author of What Napoleon Could Not Do, Derek (DK) Nnuro.
1:00 PM EDT

Honors and Awards

1977: National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon

1988: American Book Award for Beloved

1988: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved

1993: Nobel Prize in Literature

1993: Commander of the Arts and Letters, Paris

1996: National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

2000: National Humanities Medal

2010: Officier de la Légion d'Honneur

2011: Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction

2012: Presidential Medal of Freedom

2014: Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award given by the National Book Critics Circle

2020: Designation of "Toni Morrison Day" in Ohio, to be celebrated annually on her birthday, February 18

2021: The Toni Morrison Achievement Award was established with the National Book Critics Circle

A Celebration of the Life of Toni Morrison

Contact

Permissions (CAA): amanda.urbanasst@caa.com

Permissions for use of the papers: boatman@princeton.edu

Publicity: Todd Doughty, tdoughty@penguinrandomhouse.com

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