Remembering Toni Morrison:

Toni Morrison, who didn’t publish her first book until she was almost 40, penned roughly a dozen novels, most lauded among them 1987’s “Beloved,” about a former slave who kills her baby to ensure it is never enslaved. “Beloved” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

Her books gazed unflinchingly on the lives of African Americans and told their stories with a singular lyricism. Her talent for intertwining the stark realities of black life with hints of magical realism and breathtaking prose gained Morrison a loyal literary following.

Themes such as slavery, misogyny, colorism and supernaturalism came to life in her hands.

It seems slightly odd to say “roughly a dozen” but I’m guessing it’s because she did some genre-crossing, so it depends on what you count as a novel.

“I didn’t become interested in writing until I was about 30 years old,” she later said. “I didn’t really regard it as writing then, although I was putting words on paper. I thought of it as a very long, sustained reading process — except that I was the one producing the words.”

Reading and writing can be very intertwined. I read with a spiral notebook always at my elbow, because sometimes – often – I need to write something down. I have more than fifty of them. I recommend the practice.

Then-President Barack Obama awarded Toni Morrison the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.

“I remember reading ‘Song of Solomon’ when I was a kid and not just trying to figure out how to write but also how to be and how to think,” Obama said at the ceremony, referecing to Morrison’s 1977 novel.