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Toni Morisson

Toni Morisson

Toni Morrison (born February 18, 1931) is one of the most prominent authors in world literature, having won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Through her writings and other works, Morrison was also instrumental in bringing recognition to the genre of African American literature. Several of her novels are included among the canon of American literature, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved (winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction), and Song of Solomon. Her writings are known for dealing with epic themes, for Morrison's writing of dialogue, and for her detailed depictions of African Americans. In recent years, Morrison has published a number of children's books with her son, Slade Morrison. Beloved was adapted into the 1998 film Beloved by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions. Harpo Productions

Morrison's early years

Morrison was born as Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. Morrison was the second of four children in a working-class African American family. As a child Morrison read constantly (among her favorite authors were Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy). Morrison's father, George Wofford, a welder by trade, told her numerous folktales of the black community (a method of storytelling that would later work its way into Morrison's writings). In 1949 Morrison entered Howard University to study humanities. While there she changed her name from "Chloe" to "Toni," explaining that people found "Chloe" too difficult to pronounce. Morrison received a B.A. in English from Howard in 1953, then earned a Master of Arts degree from Cornell University in 1955.

Promoting black literature

After graduation, Morrison became an English instructor at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas (from 1955-57) then returned to Howard to teach English. In 1958 she married Howard Morrison. They had two children and divorced in 1964. After the divorce she moved to Syracuse, New York, where she worked as a textbook editor. Eighteen months later she went to work as an editor at the New York City headquarters of Random House. As an editor Morrison played an important role in bringing African American literature into the mainstream. She edited books by such black authors as Toni Cade Bambara and Gayl Jones. She also taught English at two branches of the State University of New York. In 1984 she was appointed to an Albert Schweitzer chair at the State University of New York at Albany. Currently, Morrison is Robert F. Goheen Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University, a position she has held since 1989. At Princeton, she has conceived and developed the prestigious Princeton Atelier, a program that brings together talented students with critically acclaimed, world-famous artists. Together the students and the artists produce works of art that are presented to the public after a semester of collaboration. In her position at Princeton, Morrison uses her insights to encourage not merely new and emerging writers, but artists who are constantly trying to develop new forms of art through interdisciplinary play and cooperation.

Morrison's Novels

The Bluest Eye (1970)

Morrison wrote her first novel, The Bluest Eye, while raising two children and teaching at Howard University. The novel's protagonist is Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl who prays each night to become a blue-eyed beauty like Shirley Temple. Breedlove's family has numerous problems and she believes everything would be okay if only she had beautiful blue eyes. Through the course of the novel, the narrator, Claudia MacTeer, describes the destruction of Pecola's life. The novel is set in Lorain, Ohio, the town in which Morrison grew up. The novel is controversial not only in its subject matter, but also in its structure. In it, Morrison rejects a chronological structure and a single narrator, as she does in many of her works, in favour of a splintered and multifaceted approach.

Sula (1973)

Sula depicts two black woman friends and their community of Medallion, Ohio. It follows the lives of Sula, considered a threat against the community, and her cherished friend Nel, from their childhood to maturity and to death. The novel was nominated for the National Book Award.

Song of Solomon (1977)

Morrison's third novel, Song of Solomon, brought her national attention. The book was a main selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club (the first novel by a black writer to be so chosen since Richard Wright's Native Son in 1949). A family chronicle similar to Alex Haley's Roots, the novel follows the life of Macon "Milkman" Dead III, a black man living in an un named city in Michigan, from birth to adulthood. The novel won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Tar Baby (1981)

Tar Baby takes place at the Caribbean mansion of white millionaire Valerian Street and focuses on the themes of racial identity, sexuality, and family dynamics.

Beloved (1987)

Beloved is loosely based on the life and legal case of Margaret Garner, an escaped slave that killed her child to prevent the child from being taken back into slavery. The book's central figure is Sethe, an escaped slave that murdered her two-year-old daughter, Beloved, to save her from a life of slavery. The novel follows in the tradition of slave narratives but also confronts the more painful and taboo aspects of slavery, such as sexual abuse and violence. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. When the novel failed to win the National Book Award, a number of writers protested the omission. The novel was released in 1998 as the film Beloved starring Oprah Winfrey. Morrison later used Margaret Garner's life story again in the opera of the same name.

Jazz (1992)

Jazz is the story of love triangles and murder during the Jazz Age. The main character, Joe, kills someone in a fit of passion. The fragmented narrative follows the causes and consequences of the murder.

Paradise (1998)

Morrison's first novel since winning the Nobel Prize is set in Ruby, Oklahoma. The story revolves around an attack on a former girls' school nicknamed "the Convent," now occupied by unconventional women fleeing from abusive husbands and unhappy pasts. The attack comes from a nearby all-Black town populated by the descendants of freed slaves.

Love (2003)

Love is the story of Bill Cosey, a charismatic but dead hotel owner, and his widow and his granddaughter, who live in his mansion.

Politics

Morrison caused a stir when she called Bill Clinton "the first Black president", saying "Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas." She currently holds a place on the editorial board of The Nation magazine.

Works

Novels


- Love (2003)
- Paradise (1999)
- Jazz (1992)
- Beloved (1987)
- Tar Baby (1981)
- Song of Solomon (1977)
- Sula (1973)
- The Bluest Eye (1970)

Children's Literature (with Slade Morrison


- Who's Got Game?: The Mirror or the Glass? to be released in 2007)
- Who's Got Game?: The Ant or the Grasshopper?, The Lion or the Mouse?, Poppy or the Snake? (to be released in December 2005)
- Who's Got Game?: Poppy or the Snake?, (2004)
- Who's Got Game?: The Ant or the Grasshopper, (2003)
- Who's Got Game?: The Lion or the Mouse?, (2003)
- The Book of Mean People, (2002)
- The Big Box, (2002)

Short Stories


- Recitatif (1983)

Plays


- Dreaming Emmet (performed 1986)

Libretto


- Margaret Garner (first performed May 2005)

Non-fiction


- Remember:The Journey to School Integration (April 2004)
- Playing in the Dark (1993)
- The Black Book (1974)

See also


- African American literature

External links


- [http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=3214 Literary Encyclopedia biography]
- [http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/morrison_toni.html Voices from the Gaps biography]
- [http://www.nobel.se/literature/laureates/1993/ The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993]
- [http://wiredforbooks.org/tonimorrison/ 1987 audio interview by Don Swaim of CBS Radio, 31 min 2 s, RealAudio] Morrison, Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison, Toni Morrison, Toni ja:トニ・モリソン

February 18

February 18 is the 49th day of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 316 days remaining (317 in leap years).

Events


- 3102 BC - Epoch (origin) of the Kali Yuga- Lord Krishna leaves his mortal coil.
- 1229 - The Sixth Crusade: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor signs a ten-year truce with al-Kamil, regaining Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem with neither military engagements nor support from the papacy.
- 1478 - George, Duke of Clarence, convicted of treason against his older brother Edward IV of England, is privately executed in the Tower of London.
- 1685 - Fort St. Louis is established by a Frenchman at Matagorda Bay thus forming the basis for France's claim to Texas.
- 1797 - Trinidad is surrendered to a British fleet under the command of Sir Ralph Abercromby.
- 1814 - Battle of Montereau occurs.
- 1841 - The first ongoing filibuster in the United States Senate begins and lasts until March 11.
- 1856 - The American Party (Know-Nothings) convene in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to nominate their first Presidential candidate, former President (Millard Fillmore).
- 1861 - In Montgomery, Alabama Jefferson Davis is inaugurated as the provisional President of the Confederate States of America.
- 1861 - With the Italian unification almost complete, King Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia assumes the title of King of Italy.
- 1865 - In the U.S., Delaware voters reject the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and vote to continue the practice of slavery. (Delaware finally ratifies the amendment on February 12, 1901.)
- 1878 - The Lincoln County War begins in Lincoln County, New Mexico.
- 1885 - Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is published for the first time.
- 1911 - The first official flight with air mail takes place in Allahabad, British India, when Henri Pequet, a 23-year-old pilot, delivers 6,500 letters to Naini, about 10 km away.
- 1913 - Raymond Poincaré becomes President of France.
- 1929 - First Academy Awards are announced.
- 1930 - While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto.
- 1930 - Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in an airplane and also the first cow to be milked in an airplane.
- 1932 - The Empire of Japan declares Manzhouguo (obsolete Chinese name for Manchuria) independent from China.
- 1943 - The Nazis arrest the members of the White Rose movement.
- 1943 - Joseph Goebbels delivers the Sportpalast speech
- 1948 - Eamon de Valera resigns as Taoiseach of Ireland.
- 1953 - The first 3D film, Bwana Devil, opens.
- 1953 - Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz sign an $8,000,000 contract to continue the I Love Lucy television series through 1955.
- 1965 - The Gambia becomes independent from the United Kingdom.
- 1970 - The Chicago Eight are found not guilty of conspiring to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic Party national convention.
- 1972 - The California Supreme Court invalidates the state's death penalty and commutes the sentences of all death row inmates to life in prison.
- 1974 - The game show Tattletales debuts in the slot vacated by the long-running soap opera The Secret Storm.
- 1974 - KISS releases their self-titled debut album.
- 1977 - The Space Shuttle Enterprise test vehicle goes on its maiden "flight" while sitting on top of a Boeing 747.
- 1983 - Thirteen people die and one is seriously injured in the Wah Mee Massacre in Seattle, Washington, said to be the largest robbery-motivated mass-murder in American history.
- 1985 - The legendary "mirror globe" ident, first used in 1969, is seen for the last time in regular rotation on BBC1.
- 1998 - Two white separatists are arrested in Nevada and accused of plotting a biological attack on New York City subways.
- 2003 - Nearly 200 people die in the Daegu subway fire in South Korea
- 2004 - Up to 295 people, including nearly 200 rescue workers, die near Neyshabur in Iran when a run-away freight train carrying sulfur, petrol and fertiliser catches fire and explodes.
- 2005 - The United Kingdom law banning fox hunting, hare coursing and other sports which kill wild mammals is enforced from this date.

Births


- 1516 - Queen Mary I of England (d. 1558)
- 1530 - Uesugi Kenshin, Japanese samurai and warlord (d. 1578)
- 1559 - Isaac Casaubon, French classical scholar (d. 1614)
- 1602 - Per Brahe (the younger), Swedish soldier and statesman (d. 1680)
- 1635 - Johan Göransson Gyllenstierna, Swedish statesman (d. 1680)
- 1609 - Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, English statesman and historian (d. 1674)
- 1642 - Marie Champmeslé, French actress (d. 1698)
- 1658 - Charles-Irénée Castel de Saint-Pierre, French writer (d. 1743)
- 1745 - Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist (d. 1827)
- 1835 - César Cui, Lithuanian composer (d. 1918)
- 1838 - Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist and philosopher (d. 1916)
- 1846 - Wilson Barrett, English actor and playwright (d. 1904)
- 1848 - Louis Comfort Tiffany, American glass artist (d. 1933)
- 1849 - Alexander Kielland, Norwegian author (d. 1906)
- 1859 - Sholom Aleichem, Russian Yiddish humorist and author (d. 1916)
- 1871 - Harry Brearley, English inventor (d. 1948)
- 1883 - Nikos Kazantzakis, Greek writer (d. 1957)
- 1884 - Andrew Watson Myles, Canadian politician (d. 1970)
- 1890 - Edward Arnold, American actor (d. 1956)
- 1890 - Adolphe Menjou, American actor (d. 1963)
- 1892 - Wendell Willkie, U.S. Presidential candidate (d. 1944)
- 1896 - Andre Breton, French writer (d. 1966)
- 1898 - Enzo Ferrari, Italian race car driver and manufacturer (d. 1988)
- 1901 - Reginald Sheffield, British actor (d. 1957)
- 1903 - Nikolai Podgorny, President of the Soviet Union (d. 1983)
- 1905 - Jan Gies, Dutch resistance fighter (d. 1993)
- 1906 - Hans Asperger, Austrian pediatrician (d. 1980)
- 1909 - Wallace Stegner, American writer (d. 1993)
- 1915 - Phyllis Calvert, British actress (d. 2002)
- 1919 - Jack Palance, American actor
- 1920 - Bill Cullen, American game show host (d. 1990)
- 1920 - Eric Gairy, Grenadan politician (d. 1997)
- 1922 - Helen Gurley Brown, American editor and publisher
- 1922 - Allan Melvin, American actor
- 1925 - George Kennedy, American actor
- 1927 - John Warner, U.S. Senator
- 1929 - Len Deighton, British author
- 1930 - Gahan Wilson, American cartoonist
- 1931 - Johnny Hart, American cartoonist
- 1931 - Toni Morrison, American writer, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1931 - Bob St. Clair, American football player
- 1932 - Milos Forman, Czech film director
- 1933 - Yoko Ono, Japanese-born singer, artist, and wife of John Lennon
- 1933 - Bobby Robson, English football manager
- 1933 - Mary Ure, Scottish actress (d. 1975)
- 1936 - Jean Auel, American writer
- 1938 - István Szabó, Hungarian film director
- 1943 - Graeme Garden, Scottish writer, comedian, and actor
- 1945 - Judy Rankin, American golfer
- 1947 - Princess Christina of the Netherlands
- 1947 - Dennis DeYoung, American musician (Styx)
- 1948 - Sinéad Cusack, Irish actress
- 1949 - Gary Ridgway, American serial killer
- 1950 - John Hughes, American director, producer, and writer
- 1950 - Cybill Shepherd, American actress
- 1952 - Maurice Lucas, American basketball player
- 1952 - Juice Newton, American entertainer
- 1954 - John Travolta, American actor
- 1957 - Marita Koch, German athlete
- 1957 - Vanna White, American game show presenter
- 1960 - Greta Scacchi, Italian actress
- 1962 - Julie Strain, American actress
- 1964 - Matt Dillon, American actor
- 1965 - Dr. Dre, American rapper and record producer
- 1967 - Roberto Baggio, Italian footballer
- 1968 - Molly Ringwald, American actress
- 1970 - Susan Egan, American musical actress
- 1973 - Claude Makelele, French footballer
- 1975 - Gary Neville, English footballer
- 1981 - Andrei Kirilenko, Russian basketball player
- 1981 - Buddy Nielsen, American singer (Senses Fail)
- 1983 - Jermaine Jenas, English footballer
- 1985 - Lee Boyd Malvo, American serial killer
- 1988 - Rihanna, West Indian singer

Deaths


- 806 - Tarasius, Patriarch of Constantinople (b. 1866)
- 814 - Angilbert, Frankish monk and confidant of Charlemagne
- 901 - Thabit ibn Qurra, Arab astronomer and mathematician (b. 826)
- 999 - Pope Gregory V
- 1139 - Prince Yaropolk II of Kiev (b. 1082)
- 1294 - Kublai Khan of the Mongol Empire (b. 1215)
- 1379 - Albert II of Mecklenburg
- 1478 - George, Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV and Richard III of England (executed) (b. 1449)
- 1535 - Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, astrologer and alchemist (b. 1486)
- 1546 - Martin Luther, German religious reformer (b. 1483)
- 1564 - Michelangelo Buonarroti, Italian artist (b. 1475)
- 1583 - Antonio Francesco Grazzini, Itlian writer (b. 1503)
- 1654 - Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, French writer (b. 1594)
- 1683 - Nicolaes Pieterszoon Berchem, Dutch painter (b. 1620)
- 1712 - Louis, Duke of Burgundy, heir to the throne of France (b. 1682)
- 1718 - Pierre Antoine Motteux, French-born English dramatist (b. 1663)
- 1743 - Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici, last of the Medicis (b. 1667)
- 1748 - Otto Ferdinand Graf von Abensperg und Traun, Austrian field marshal (b. 1677)
- 1772 - Johann Hartwig Ernst, Count von Bernstorff, Danish statesman (b. 1712)
- 1778 - Joseph Marie Terray, French statesman (b. 1715)
- 1780 - Kristijonas Donelaitis, Lithuanian poet (b. 1714)
- 1788 - John Whitehurst, English clockmaker and scientist (b. 1713)
- 1803 - Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleim, German poet (b. 1719)
- 1931 - Milan Sufflay, Croatian politician (b. 1879)
- 1933 - James J. Corbett, American boxer (b. 1866)
- 1938 - David King Udall, American politician (b. 1851)
- 1942 - Albert Payson Terhune, American author (b. 1872)
- 1956 - Gustave Charpentier, French composer
- 1957 - Henry Norris Russell, American astronomer (b. 1877)
- 1966 - Robert Rossen, American screenwriter, producer, and director (d. 1908
- 1967 - J. Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist (b. 1904)
- 1973 - Frank Costello, Italian-born gangster (b. 1891)
- 1977 - Andy Devine, American actor (b. 1905)
- 1978 - Maggie McNamara, American actress (b. 1928)
- 1981 - John Knudsen Northrop, American aircraft designer (b. 1895)
- 1982 - Ngaio Marsh, New Zealand author (b. 1895)
- 1993 - Kerry Von Erich, American professional wrestler
- 1993 - Jacqueline Hill, British actress (b. 1929)
- 1997 - Emily Hahn, American writer (b. 1905)
- 1998 - Harry Caray, baseball broadcaster (b. 1917)
- 1999 - Noam Pitlik, American actor and director (b. 1932)
- 2001 - Balthus, French-Polish painter (b. 1908)
- 2001 - Dale Earnhardt, American race car driver (b. 1951)
- 2001 - Eddie Mathews, baseball player (b. 1931)
- 2003 - Isser Harel, Israeli Mossad leader (b. 1912)
- 2004 - Jean Rouch, French filmmaker and ethnologist (b. 1917)

Holidays and observances


- Independence Day in The Gambia, (1965)

External links


- [http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/february/18 BBC: On This Day]
- [http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20050218.html The New York Times: On This Day] ---- February 17 - February 19 - January 18 - March 18 -- listing of all days ko:2월 18일 ms:18 Februari ja:2月18日 simple:February 18 th:18 กุมภาพันธ์

1931

1931 (MCMXXXI) is a common year starting on Thursday.

Events

January-March


- January 4 - Elly Beinhorn begins her flight to Africa
- January 6 - Thomas Edison submits his last patent application.
- January 22 - Sir Isaac Isaacs sworn in as the first Australian-born Governor-General of Australia
- January 25 - Mohandas Gandhi released again
- January 27 - Pierre Laval forms a government in France
- February 10 - New Delhi becomes the capital of India
- February 16 - Pehr Evind Svinhufvud elected president of Finland
- February 20 - California gets the go-ahead by the U.S. Congress to build the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
- February 21 - Peruvian revolutionaries hijack a Ford Tri-motor aeroplane and demand that the pilot drop propaganda leaflets over Lima
- March 1 - Henry Pu Yi, former Emperor of China, is proclaimed King of the puppet state of Manchukuo by Japan.
- March 1 - USS Arizona (BB-39) placed back in full commission after a refit
- March 3 - The Star-Spangled Banner is adopted as the United States National anthem.
- March 4 - British viceroy of India and Mohandas Gandhi negotiate
- March 7 - New House of Representatives opened in Helsinki, Finland
- March 17 - Nevada legalizes gambling
- March 25 - The Scottsboro Boys are arrested in Alabama and charged with rape.
- March 27 - British writer Arnold Bennet dies in Paris when he drinks local water to prove it safe to drink - but is poisoned
- March 31 - An earthquake destroys Managua, Nicaragua killing 2,000.

April-August


- April 1 - Earthquake destroys Managua, Nicaragua - over 2000 dead
- April 6 - Portuguese government declares martial law in Madeira and in the Azores because of an attempted military takeover in Funchal
- April 9 - Execution of Argentinean anarchist Severino Digiovanni
- April 14 - 2nd Spanish Republic proclaimed in Spain
- April 22 - Austria, Britain, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Sweden and USA recognize the Spanish Republic
- May 1 - Construction of the Empire State Building is completed in New York City
- May 4 - Kemal Atatürk re-elected president of Turkey
- May 13 - Paul Doumer elected president of France
- June 12 - Charlie Parker equals J.T. Hearne's record for the earliest date to reach 100 wickets.
- June 14 - Yacht St Philiebert sinks in river Loire in France - over 500 drown
- June 23 - Wiley Post and Harold Gatty take off from Roosevelt Field, Long Island in an attempt to accomplish the first round-the-world flight in a single-engine plane. [http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Explorers_Record_Setters_and_Daredevils/Wiley_Post/EX27.htm]
- July 1 - Official opening of Milan Central Station
- July 16 - Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia signs the first constitution of Ethiopia
- Huang He floods kill between 850,000 and 4,000,000 people - the most deadly historic natural disaster.
- August 24 - Labour Government of Ramsay MacDonald resigns in Britain - replaced by National Government of people drawn from all parties also under MacDonald.
- August 31 - Yangtze River floods - 23 million made homeless

September-December


- September 5 - John Thomson, soccer player, dies in an accident during a Celtic - Rangers match
- September 15 - The Invergordon Mutiny: Strikes in Royal Navy due to decreased salaries
- September 18 - Mukden Incident. After that, Japan uses it to occupy Manchuria.
- September 18 - Geli Raubal is found shot dead in Hitler's apartment
- November 7 - Chinese People's Republic proclaimed by Mao Tse Tung.
- November 8 - French gendarmes launch a large scale raid against Corsican bandits
- November 8 - Panama Canal closed for couple of weeks due to damage caused by a number of earthquakes
- December 10 - Niceto Alcalá-Zamora elected president of Spanish republic

Undated


- Deuterium discovered by Harold Clayton Urey.
- The Castellemmarese War ends with the assassination of Joe "The Boss" Masseria, briefly leaving Salvatore Maranzano as capo di tutti capi, "boss of all bosses" and undisputed ruler of the American mafia. Maranzano is himself assassinated less than 6 months later, leading to the establishment of the Five Families
- Ust-Abakanskoye becomes Abakan.
- National Committee for Modification of the Volstead Act formed to work for repeal of prohibition in United States.

Births

January


- January 5 - Alvin Ailey, American choreographer (d. 1989)
- January 5 - Alfred Brendel, Austrian pianist
- January 5 - Robert Duvall, American actor and director
- January 6 - E. L. Doctorow, American author
- January 8 - Bill Graham, German concert promoter (d. 1991)
- January 10 - Peter Barnes, English playwright and screenwriter (d. 2004)
- January 13 - Charles Nelson Reilly, American actor
- January 14 - Caterina Valente, French singer and actress
- January 16 - Johannes Rau, President of Germany
- January 17 - James Earl Jones, American actor
- January 19 - Tippi Hedren, American actress
- January 19 - Robert MacNeil, Canadian journalist
- January 20 - David Lee, American physicist, Nobe Prize laureate
- January 22 - Sam Cooke, American singer (d. 1964)
- January 27 - Mordecai Richler, Canadian author (d. 2001)
- January 30 - Allan W. Eckert, American historian, naturalist, and author
- January 31 - Ernie Banks, baseball player

February-April


- February 1 - Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia
- February 2 - Dries van Agt, Dutch politician
- February 6 - Rip Torn, American actor and director
- February 8 - James Dean, American actor (d. 1955)
- February 10 - Thomas Bernhard, Dutch author (d. 1989)
- February 11 - Larry Merchant, author and boxing commentator
- February 18 - Johnny Hart, American cartoonist
- February 18 - Toni Morrison, American writer, Nobel Prize laureate
- February 18 - Bob St. Clair, American football star
- February 24 - Brian Close, British cricket player
- February 26 - Ally McLeod, Scottish football manager
- February 28 - Dean Smith, American basketball coach
- March 2 - Mikhail Gorbachev, President of the Soviet Union, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
- March 2 - Tom Wolfe, American author
- March 11 - Rupert Murdoch, Australian-born publisher
- March 22 - Burton Richter, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- March 22 - William Shatner, Canadian actor
- March 26 - Leonard Nimoy, American actor and director
- March 29 - Aleksei Gubarev, cosmonaut
- April 1 - Rolf Hochhuth, German writer
- April 27 - Igor Oistrakh, Ukrainian violinist
- April 29 - Frank Auerbach, German-born painter
- April 29 - Lonnie Donegan, Scottish musician (d. 2002)

May-August


- May 6 - Willie Mays, baseball player
- May 7 - Teresa Brewer, American singer
- May 13 - Jim Jones, American cult leader (d. 1978)
- May 14 - Alvin Lucier, American composer
- May 15 - Ken Venturi, American golfer
- May 16 - Natwar Singh, Indian politician
- May 18 - Robert Morse, American actor
- May 19 - Eric Tappy, Swiss tenor
- May 20 - Ken Boyer, baseball player (d. 1982)
- May 25 - Georgi Grechko, cosmonaut
- May 31 - John Robert Schrieffer, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- May 31 - Shirley Verrett, American mezzo-soprano
- June 3 - Lindy Remigino, American athlete
- June 7 - Malcolm Morley, English-born painter
- June 9 - Joe Santos, American actor
- June 20 - Martin Landau, American actor
- June 27 - Martinus J. G. Veltman, Dutch physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- July 1 - Leslie Caron, French actress
- July 10 - Alice Munro, Canadian writer
- July 26 - Fred Foster, American songwriter and record producer
- August 12 - William Goldman, American author
- August 19 - Willie Shoemaker, American jockey (d. 2003)
- August 23 - Hamilton O. Smith, American microbiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
- August 25 - Regis Philbin, American television personality
- August 28 - John Shirley-Quirk, English bass-baritone
- August 31 - Jean Béliveau, Canadian hockey player

September-December


- September 17 - Anne Bancroft, American actress (d. 2005)
- September 22 - Fay Weldon, British author
- September 22 - George Younger, 4th Viscount Younger of Leckie, British politician (d. 2003)
- September 23 - Gerald Stairs Merrithew, Canadian educator and statesman (d. 2004)
- September 29 - James Watson Cronin, American nuclear physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- September 29 - Anita Ekberg, Swedish actress
- September 30 - Wesley L. Fox, U.S. Marine Corps officer
- October 6 - Riccardo Giacconi, Italian-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate
- October 7 - Cotton Fitzsimmons, American basketball coach (d. 2004)
- October 7 - Desmond Tutu, South African Anglican archbishop and activist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
- October 13 - Eddie Mathews, baseball player (d. 2001)
- October 20 - Mickey Mantle, baseball player (d. 1995)
- October 23 - Jim Bunning, baseball player and U.S. Senator
- October 23 - Diana Dors, English actress
- November 15 - Mwai Kibaki, Kenya's third president
- November 21 - Malcolm Williamson, Australian composer (d. 2003)
- November 23 - Dervla Murphy, Irish author
- November 26 - Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Argentine activist, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize
- November 28 - Hope Lange, American actress (d. 2003)
- December 23 - Ronnie Schell, American actor
- December 24 - Mauricio Kagel, Argentine composer
- December 30 - Skeeter Davis, Ameircan singer (d. 2004)
- December 31 - Bob Shaw, British author (d. 1996)

Month/day unknown


- Joseph A. Califano, Jr., American politician

Deaths


- January 14 - Hardy Richardson, baseball player (b. 1855)
- January 23 - Anna Pavlova, Russian ballerina (b. 1881)
- February 11 - Charles Algernon Parsons, British inventor (b. 1854)
- February 16 - Wilhelm von Gloeden, German photographer (b. 1856)
- February 26 - Otto Wallach, German chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1847)
- March 7 - Akseli Gallén-Kallela, Finnish painter (b. 1865)
- March 11 - F.W. Murnau, German director (b. 1888)
- March 21 - Bhagat Singh, Indian revolutionary (b. 1908)
- March 31 - Knute Rockne, American football coach (b. 1888)
- April 8 - Erik Axel Karlfeldt, Swedish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1864)
- April 10 - Khalil Gibran Lebanese poet and painter (b. 1883)
- April 30 - Sammy Woods, English cricketer (b. 1867)
- May 9 - Albert Abraham Michelson, German-born physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1852)
- May 14 - David Belasco, American writer (b. 1853)
- July 4 - Buddie Petit, American jazz musician
- July 12 - Nathan Söderblom, Swedish archbishop, recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize (b. 1866)
- August 6 - Bix Beiderbecke, American jazz trumpeter (b. 1903)
- August 27 - Frank Harris, Irish author and editor (b. 1856)
- August 27 - Francis Marion Smith, American borax magnate (b. 1846)
- October 13 - Ernst Didring, Swedish writer (b. 1868)
- October 18 - Thomas Edison, American inventor (b. 1847)
- November 11 - Shibusawa Eiichi, Japanese industrialist (b. 1840)
- December 2 - Vincent d'Indy, French composer (b. 1851)

Undated


- Joseph Tabrar, British songwriter (b. 1857)

Nobel Prizes


- Physics - not awarded
- Chemistry - Carl Bosch, Friedrich Bergius
- Medicine - Otto Heinrich Warburg
- Literature - Erik Axel Karlfeldt
- Peace - Jane Addams, Nicholas Murray Butler Category:1931 ko:1931년 ms:1931 ja:1931年 simple:1931 th:พ.ศ. 2474



Western canon

The Western canon is a canon of books and art (and specifically one with very loose boundaries) that is thought by many to have been highly influential in shaping Western culture. The selection of a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism. Examples of canonical lists include:
- The Harvard Classics
- Great Books of the Western World
- [http://web.archive.org/web/20040717050657/http://www.literarycritic.com/bloom.htm Harold Bloom's canon] University reading lists are also good indicators of what is considered to be in the Western canon:
- St. John's College reading list

Origins

The process of listmaking—defining the boundaries of the canon—is endless. One of the notable attempts in the English-speaking world was the Great Books of the Western World program. This program, developed in the middle third of the 20th century, grew out of the curriculum at the University of Chicago. University president Robert Hutchins and his collaborator Mortimer Adler developed a program that offered reading lists, books, and organizational strategies for reading clubs to the general public. An earlier attempt, the Harvard Classics (1909) was promulgated by Harvard University president Charles W. Eliot, whose thesis was the same as Carlyle's: :... The greatest university of all is a collection of books. --Thomas Carlyle

Debate

There has been an ongoing, intensely political debate over the nature and status of the canon since at least the 1960s. In the USA, in particular, it has been attacked as a compendium of books written mainly by "dead white European males", that thus do not represent the viewpoints of many others in contemporary societies around the world. Others, notably Allan Bloom in his 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind, have fought back vigorously. Authors such as Yale Professor of Humanities Harold Bloom (no relation) have also spoken strongly in favor of the canon, and in general the canon remains as a represented idea in most institutions, though its implications continue to be debated heavily. Defenders maintain that those who undermine the canon do so out of primarily political interests, and that the measure of quality represented by the works of the canon is of an aesthetic rather than political nature. Thus, any political objections aimed at the canon are ultimately irrelevant. One of the main objections to a canon of literature is the question of authority—who should enjoy the power to determine what works are worth reading and teaching?

Works

Works which are commonly included in the canon include works of fiction such as epic poems, poetry, music, drama, novels, and other assorted forms of literature from the many, diverse Western (and more recently non-Western) cultures. Many non-fiction works are also listed, primarily from the areas of religion, science, philosophy, economics, politics, and history. Works which directly address the canon (both for and against):
- The History of Western Literature by Otto Maria Carpeaux
- Shakespeare by Harold Bloom
- The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages by Harold Bloom
- The Dead Father by Donald Barthelme

See also


- history
- literature
- university
- seminal work
- relativism
- string quartet repertory
- Mortimer Adler
- Stringfellow Barr
- Allan Bloom
- Harold Bloom
- Scott Buchanan
- Robert Hutchins

External links


- [http://home.comcast.net/~dwtaylor1/theocraticcanon.html "Harold Bloom's canon"]
- [http://www.centerforbookculture.org/context/no7/white.html All That You Know Not to Be Is Utterly Real, Part I by Curtis White]
- [http://www.thegreatideas.org/ "Great Ideas" Website]
- [http://books.mirror.org/gb.home.html A "Great Books" Website]
- [http://westerncanon.com Western Canon Great Books University] Category:Books Category:Literature

The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye is a novel by Toni Morrison which details a summer in the life of a young black girl in Lorain, Ohio named Pecola. The story is told from four perspectives, Pecola's, her friend's, Soaphead Church, and her parents'. Because of the controversial nature of the book, dealing with racism and child molestation, there have been numerous attempts to ban it.

Characters


- Pecola Breedlove- She is a poor black girl who believes she is ugly because she and her community base their ideals of beauty on "whiteness". She is the main character in the novel. The title of the novel "The Bluest Eye" is based on Pecola's fervent wishes for beautiful blue eyes.
- Cholly Breedlove- Pecola's abusive father; an alcoholic man who rapes his daughter. Rejected by his father and discarded by his mother at a young age, Cholly was raised by a surrogate mother "Aunt Jimmy". After she dies, Cholly runs away and pursues the life of a "free man", yet he is never able to escape his painful past, nor can he live with the mistakes of his present.
- Pauline Breedlove- Pecola's mother. Mrs. Breedlove is married to Cholly and lives the self-righteous life of a martyr - enduring her drunkard husband and raising her two awkward children as best she can. Mrs. Breedlove herself is a bit of an outcast with her broken limp leg and her Southern background. Mrs. Breedlove lives the life of a lonely and isolated character always escaping into a world of dreams, hopes and fantasy.
- Sam Breedlove- Pecola's younger brother. Sammy is Cholly and Mrs. Breedlove's one son. Sam's part in the novel is relatively low key. Like his sister Pecola, he is affected by the disharmony in their home and deals with his anger by running away and escaping into the world.
- Claudia MacTeer- Much of the novel is told from the perspective of Claudia and in this sense, she is the primary narrator in the book. Claudia is Pecola's friend and the younger sister of Frieda MacTeer. The MacTeer family serves as a foil for the Breedloves, and although both families are poor, Mr. and Mrs. MacTeer are strict but loving parents towards their children - a sharp contrast to the dysfunctional home of the Breedloves.
- Frieda MacTeer- Claudia's older sister and close companion. The two MacTeer girls are often seen together and whilst the story is told through Claudia's eyes, her sister Frieda plays a large role in the novel.
- Henry Washington- a man who comes to live with the MacTeer family and then is thrown out by Claudia's father once he inappropriately touches Claudia's sister Frieda. Bluest Eye

Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction has been awarded since 1948 for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life. It replaced the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel.
- 1948: Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
- 1949: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens
- 1950: The Way West by A. B. Guthrie, Jr.
- 1951: The Town by Conrad Richter
- 1952: The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk
- 1953: The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
- 1954: no award given
- 1955: A Fable by William Faulkner
- 1956: Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor
- 1957: no award given
- 1958: A Death in the Family by James Agee
- 1959: The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor
- 1960: Advise and Consent by Allen Drury
- 1961: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- 1962: The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O'Connor
- 1963: The Reivers by William Faulkner
- 1964: no award given
- 1965: The Keepers of the House by Shirley Ann Grau
- 1966: Collected Stories by Katherine Anne Porter
- 1967: The Fixer by Bernard Malamud
- 1968: The Confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron
- 1969: House Made of Dawn by N. Scott Momaday
- 1970: Collected Stories by Jean Stafford
- 1971: no award given
- 1972: Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner
- 1973: The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
- 1974: no award given 1
- 1975: The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
- 1976: Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow
- 1977: no award given
- 1978: Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson
- 1979: The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
- 1980: The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
- 1981: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
- 1982: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike
- 1983: The Color Purple by Alice Walker
- 1984: Ironweed by William Kennedy
- 1985: Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie
- 1986: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
- 1987: A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
- 1988: Beloved by Toni Morrison
- 1989: Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler
- 1990: The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos
- 1991: Rabbit At Rest by John Updike
- 1992: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
- 1993: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler
- 1994: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
- 1995: The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
- 1996: Independence Day by Richard Ford
- 1997: Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser
- 1998: American Pastoral by Philip Roth
- 1999: The Hours by Michael Cunningham
- 2000: Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
- 2001: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
- 2002: Empire Falls by Richard Russo
- 2003: Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
- 2004: The Known World by Edward P. Jones
- 2005: Gilead by Marilynne Robinson 1 The fiction jury voted unanimously to grant the 1974 award to Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, but the rest of the Pulitzer panel overturned this decision.

External links


- [http://www.pulitzer.org/ Pulitzer Prizes] official site
- [http://book.awardannals.com/award/pulitzer/fiction/topbooks Most Honored Pulitzer Prize finalists] Category:Pulitzer Prizes Category:Fiction Category:Literary awards Category:Books by award

Song of Solomon (novel)

Song of Solomon (ISBN 0452260116) is a novel by Pulitzer-prize and Nobel-prize winner Toni Morrison, published in 1977. It follows the life of Macon "Milkman" Dead III, an African-American male living in Michigan, from birth to adulthood. This book won Morrison the National Books Critics Award and was chosen for Oprah Winfrey's popular book club. Note: This book, among others, were cited in by the Swedish Academy in awarding Morrison the 1993 Nobel Prize in literature.[http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1993/press.html]

See also


- African American literature Category:1977 books Category:American novels

African Americans

An African American (also Afro-American, Black American, or simply black), is a member of an ethnic group in the United States whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to Africa. Many African Americans have European and/or Native American ancestry as well. The term refers specifically to black African ancestry; not, for example, to white or Arab African ancestry, such as Moroccan or white South African ancestry. Blacks from non-African countries such as Jamaica, Haiti, Cuba, Great Britain, or Australia are theoretically referred to by their nation of origin and not African American, but in general the assumption is that if you are black, you are "African American".

Nomenclature

The term "African American" has been in common usage in the United States since the late 1980s, when greater numbers of African Americans began to adopt the term self-referentially. Malcolm X favored the term "African American" over "Negro" and used the term at an OAAU (Organization of Afro American Unity) meeting in the early 1960s, saying, "Twenty-two million African-Americans - that's what we are - Africans who are in America." Former NBA player/coach Lenny Wilkens is another who used the term as a teenager when filling a job application. Many Blacks began to abandon the term "Afro-American", which had become popular in the 1960s and '70s, for "African-American," because they desired an unabbreviated expression of their African heritage that could not be mistaken or derided as an allusion to the afro hairstyle. The term became increasingly popular, and by the 1980s, Jesse Jackson and others pressed for its adoption and acceptance. Users of the term argued that "African-American" was more in keeping with the nation's immigrant tradition of so-called "hyphenated Americans", who were known by terms like "Irish-American", or "Chinese-American", "Polish-American"), which link people with their, or their ancestors', geographic points of origin. Terms used at various points in American history include Negroes, colored, Blacks and Afro-Americans. Negro and colored were common until the late 1960s, but are now less commonly used and considered derogatory. African American, Black and, to a lesser extent, Afro-American are used interchangeably today, but their precise meanings and connotations are in dispute. The term African American is sometimes problematic because of its imprecise cultural and geographic meaning. The term as originally applied refers to only those descended from a small number of colonial indentured servants and the estimated 500,000 Africans taken to British North America or the U.S. as slaves (of approximately 11 million Africans taken to the western hemisphere in general). In slightly broader usage, the term can include West Indian and Afro-Latino immigrants whose African ancestors also survived the Middle Passage or recent African immigrants/children of immigrants with American citizenship, but these groups tend to use the ethnic terms Latino or Hispanic, or identify themselves by their countries of origin (i.e., as Dominican or Jamaican instead of African American). The term does not include white, Indian or Arab immigrants from the African continent, as they are not generally considered 'Africans' by English-speaking people. The common interpretation of the term 'African American' is frequently, and controversially, challenged; including an infamous incident at a [http://www.cnn.com/2004/EDUCATION/01/22/king.controversy.ap/ Nebraska High School] where a white South African student campaigned for a "Distinguished African American Student Award."

Current Demographics

Jamaican According to 2003 U.S. Census figures, some 37.1 million African Americans live in the United States, comprising 12.9 percent of the total population. At the time of the 2000 Census, 54.8 percent of African Americans lived in the South. In that year, 17.6 percent of African Americans lived in the Northeast and 18.7 percent in the Midwest, while only 8.9 percent lived in the western states. Almost 88 percent of African Americans lived in metropolitan areas in 2000. With over 2 million black residents, New York City had the largest black urban population in the United States in 2000. Among cities of 100,000 or more, Gary, Indiana, had the highest percentage of black residents of any U.S. city in 2000, with 85 percent, followed closely by Detroit, Michigan, with 83 percent. Atlanta, Georgia, has a large African-American population of about 65 percent. The nation's capital, Washington, D.C., had a 60 percent Black population.

African American history

Main article: African American history Blacks in America, like their White counterparts, are composed of many diverse ethnic groups. Over 40 identifiable ethnic groups from 25 different kingdoms were sold to the United States during the Atlantic Slave trade. These people came from an area spanning from present day Senegal all the way to Democratic Republic of Congo. Over time, Africans in America formed a new and common identity focused on their mutual condition in America as opposed to cultural and historic ties to Africa. Africans were sold and traded into bondage and shipped to the American South from 1619. In 1662 Virginia, the following law mentioned hereditary slavery and tied it to being born of a slave mother; its wording suggests that "negroes" but not "Englishmen" could be enslaved, and it was apparently clarifying an existing legal status, rather than establishing a new one.
Whereas some doubts have arisen whether children got by any Englishman upon a negro woman should be slave or free, be it therefore enacted and declared by the present grand assembly, that all children borne in this country shall be held bond or free only according to the condition of the mother.
The 1662 law brought Virginia into line with Iberian laws that had been in effect since 1265. Over the next few decades, identical laws would be adopted throughout the British colonies. They would remain in effect until U.S. slavery ended over two centuries later. The new partus sequitur ventrem law had three long-term consequences. First, it set a psychological basis for popular culture's seeing slaves as less than fully human. Prior British common law had held that social status passed through the father; only livestock ownership had been matrilineal. Second, since biracial children of free mothers were free, it enabled the emergence of a population of legitimately freeborn Americans of mixed Afro-European ancestry who had no connection to slavery within living memory. Third, it meant that tens of thousands of future slaves would be genetically European, due to European alleles from free fathers gradually replacing African alleles from slave mothers, through random DNA mixing (meiosis) at each generation. Within two centuries, this would lead to such runaway slave advertisements as, "A beautiful girl, about twenty years of age, perfectly white, with straight light hair and blue eyes. — 1847 Hannibal MO," creating the never-to-be-resolved conflict in U.S. society between a dichotomous color line and the obvious fact of mixed heritage. In 1807, the importation of slaves by U.S. citizens became illegal, yet the practice continued. By 1860, there were 3.5 million enslaved Africans in the Southern United States, and another 500,000 Africans lived free across the country. Slavery was a controversial issue in American society and politics. The growth of abolitionism, which opposed the institution of slavery, culminated in the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, and was one reason for the secession of the Confederate States of America, which lead to the American Civil War (1861 - 1865). The Emancipation Proclamation of 1862 declared all slaves in the Confederacy free under U.S. law. It included exceptions for those held in all territories that had not seceded, however, and thus did not immediately free a single slave, since U.S. law held no sway over the Confederacy at the time. The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified in 1865, freed all slaves, including those in states that had not seceded. During Reconstruction, African Americans in the South obtained the right to vote and to hold public office, as well as a number of other civil rights they previously had been denied. However, when Reconstruction ended in 1877, southern, white landowners reinstituted a regime of disenfranchisement and racial segregation, and with it a wave of terrorism and repression, including lynchings and other vigilante violence. The desperate conditions of African Americans in the South that sparked the Great Migration of the early 20th century, combined with a growing African American intellectual and cultural elite in the Northern United States, led to a movement to fight violence and discrimination against African Americans that, like abolitionism before it, crossed racial lines. One of the most prominent of these groups, the NAACP, galvanized by outspoken journalist and activist Ida B. Wells Barnett, led an anti-lynching crusade. In the 1950s, the organization mounted a series of calculated legal challenges to overturn Jim Crow segregation, culminating in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas decision. The Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board was one of defining moments of the modern-day Civil Rights Movement. It was part of a long-term strategy to strike down Jim Crow segregation in public education, the hospitality industry, public transportation, employment and housing, granting equal access to African Americans and ensuring their right to vote. The movement reached its peak in the 1960s under leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Whitney Young, and Roy Wilkins, Sr. At the same time, Nation of Islam spokesman Malcolm X and, later, Stokely Carmichael, the Black Panther Party, and the Republic of New Africa called for African Americans to embrace black nationalism and black self-empowerment, propounding ideas of African (black) unity and solidarity and pan-Africanism.

Contemporary issues

Main article: African American contemporary issues Many African Americans significantly have improved their social and economic standing since the Civil Rights Movement, and recent decades have witnessed the expansion of a robust, African American middle class across the United States. However, due in part to a legacy of racism and discrimination, African Americans as a group remain at a pronounced economic, educational and social disadvantage relative to whites. Economically, the median income of African Americans is roughly 55 percent of that of European Americans. Persistent social, economic and political issues for many African Americans include inadequate health care access and delivery; institutional racism and discrimination in housing, education, policing, criminal justice and employment; crime; poverty; and substance abuse. African Americans are frequently the targets of racial profiling. They are also more likely to be incarcerated