Ke’shunta Drake is an Assistant Editor at Historianspeaks.org. She is a graduate student. Few modern writers possess the intentionality of Toni Morrison. Over the span of almost fifty years. she produced powerful stories on Black life and people. One of the most renowned writers of the twentieth century, Morrison paved the way for contemporary authors like Jessmyn Ward, Terri McMillian, and Jacqueline Woodson. Morrison is a multi-faceted African American author, writer, essayist, children author, and professor. She has written eleven novels, and a host of children’s books, plays, poetry, and nonfiction, including the critically acclaimed novel Beloved, which was adapted into a film in 1998. She was won a Pulitzer Prize for the novel in 1988, won and a Nobel Prize 1993. She encouraged fellow writers to carve out spaces for themselves and boldly tell their stories. Questioned in interviews about the subjects of her work, especially about the absence of white characters in her work, she responded: “I am writing for Black people.”
