Toni is a diminutive of Antonia, from the Roman Antonius. **Toni Morrison (1931-2019)** was the **American novelist who in 1993 became the first Black woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature** — author of *The Bluest Eye* (1970), *Sula*, *Song of Solomon*, *Beloved* (1987 Pulitzer), *Jazz*, *Paradise*. **Her *Beloved* — about a formerly enslaved woman haunted by her dead infant daughter — was named the best work of American fiction of the past 25 years by the New York Times Book Review in 2006**. **Recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2012).**
Subject of Timothy Greenfield-Sanders's documentary *Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am* (2019).
Toni reduces to seven — the number of Nobel laureate.