NYT Books

Her landmark book “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” was among the first 20th-century autobiographies of a Black woman to reach a wide readership.

Ms. Morrison, who wrote “Beloved” and “Song of Solomon,” was the first African-American woman to win the Nobel in literature.

A distinguished American poet, she examined the experience of being Black and female in the 20th century.

She enjoyed a lifelong reputation as a glittering, annihilating humorist. For her epitaph, she suggested, “Excuse My Dust.”

Her large body of work, which included poetry, essays and autobiography, reflected her hatred of racial and sexual prejudice.

Although her books, written in the dialect of the Deep South, established her as one of the foremost writers of Black folklore, she died in obscurity.

An iconoclastic journalist, she was known for her war coverage and her aggressive, revealing interviews with the powerful.

She was recognized in 1945 for three “Soñetos de la Muerte” (“Sonnets of Death”), which were first published in Chile in 1922.

She overcame blindness and deafness, but insisted that there was nothing miraculous about her achievements.

She caused controversy with books like “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” published in 1963, which grew out of her coverage of Adolf Eichmann’s trial for The New Yorker.