Last week we lost one of the most influential and celebrated novelists in American literary history Toni Morrison. A novelist, essayist and Princeton Professor, Morrison wrote nine major novels -- all of which earned extensive critical acclaim.

Among dozens of other awards and achievements, she won both a Pulitzer Prize and American Book Award in 1988 for her novel Beloved. And in 1993, Toni Morrison became the first black woman of any nationality to win a Nobel Prize.

The citation for her award in literature declared Morrison to be an author “who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”

In 2012, Toni Morrison was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

In commencement address at Rutgers University in 2011, Toni Morrison encouraged graduates to seek a meaningful life -- something she herself had certainly achieved.

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