World-Renowned Author Toni Morrison Dead At Age 88

On Monday night, August 5, author Toni Morrison passed away in New York City at Montefiore Medical Center after suffering from pneumonia. She was 88 years old.

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The novelist's publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, announced Toni's passing on Tuesday, August 6.

Although her cause of death had to do with complications from pneumonia, Alfred revealed the author died peacefully, surrounded by her loved ones, after a “short illness.”

Toni leaves behind her first born son Harold Morrison. Her younger son, Slade Morrison passed away at age 45 from pancreatic cancer in December 2010.

The 88-year-old graduated from Howard University with a bachelor's degree in English in 1953. Two years later, she received her master’s in English from Cornell University. She would later go on to teach at Princeton University.

The Song of Solomon writer was best known for her best-selling and critically acclaimed novel Beloved, which won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. She was also awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993 — which made her the first African-American woman to receive the prestigious honor. 

“We die,” Toni said at the end of her Nobel Prize address. “That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.”