Toni Morrison poses in her downtown Manhattan apartment in New York City, the U.S., February 2, 2004. /VCG Photo
Toni Morrison, the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, has died following a short illness, her family said in a statement on Tuesday. She was 88.
"Although her passing represents a tremendous loss, we are grateful she had a long, well lived life," they said in a statement, describing her as "the consummate writer who treasured the written word."
Barack Obama – who awarded Morrison the Presidential Medal of Freedom – led the tributes, describing her as "a national treasure, as good a storyteller, as captivating, in person as she was on the page."
"Her writing was a beautiful, meaningful challenge to our conscience and our moral imagination. What a gift to breathe the same air as her, if only for a while," the former U.S. president wrote on Twitter.
President Barack Obama awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Toni Morrison, in Washington, DC, May 29, 2012. /VCG Photo
'Consummate writer'
Morrison wrote 11 novels, including "Beloved," "Song of Solomon," "Sula" and "The Bluest Eye." Many of them touch on life as a black American, in a glittering literary and award-laden career that lasted over six decades.
She also penned numerous essays, poems and speeches and was often referred to as America's "conscience" for her poignant takes on race and human rights, never afraid of commenting on the day's weightiest political issues.
Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for "Beloved" in 1988. Set after the American Civil War in the 1860s, the story centered on a slave who escaped Kentucky to the free state of Ohio. The novel was later adapted into a film of the same name, starring U.S. talk show hostess Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover and Thandie Newton.
She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, and the committee said that in novels "characterized by visionary force and poetic import," Morrison "gives life to an essential aspect of American reality."
"She was a great woman and a great writer, and I don't know which I will miss more," Robert Gottlieb, Morrison's longtime editor at Knopf publishers, said in a statement sent to AFP.
Sonny Mehta, chairman of Knopf, said he could "think of few writers in American letters who wrote with more humanity or with more love for language than Toni."
"Her narratives and mesmerizing prose have made an indelible mark on our culture. Her novels command and demand our attention. They are canonical works, and more importantly, they are books that remain beloved by readers," he said.
Oprah Winfrey and Toni Morrison (R) attend the Carl Sandburg literary awards dinner at the University of Illinois at Chicago Forum in Chicago, Illinois, the U.S., October 20, 2010. /VCG Photo
'Empress-Supreme'
Her writings touched many, including Obama who recalled reading "Song of Solomon" as a child "and not just trying to figure out how to write, but also how to be and how to think."
Winfrey called her the "Empress-Supreme among writers."
"She was a magician with language who understood the Power of words. She used them to roil us, to wake us, to educate us and help us grapple with our deepest wounds and try to comprehend them," she wrote on Instagram.
Morrison also worked as an editor at Random House, the first African-American woman to do so, and taught creative writing for many years, including at Princeton University.
(With input from AFP)