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World-Renowned Author Toni Morrison Dead At Age 88
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Aug. 6 2019, Updated 4:24 p.m. ET
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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“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.”