Writer Toni Morrison remembered, celebrated in Chicago

CHICAGO (AP) - Nobel laureate Toni Morrison is being remembered in Chicago as a "transcendent voice" who captured the imagination of readers around the globe.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a Tuesday statement that she was a fan of the writer who died Monday evening at age 88.

Morrison was a pioneer with such novels as "The Bluest Eye," ''Beloved," and "Song of Solomon. She was the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in literature.

Lightfoot, who is also black, says Morrison gave a "profound and transcendent voice to our nation's African-American experience which had long been silenced."

Morrison is the subject of an acclaimed documentary, "Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am," which came out this year. It is scheduled to play this month at theaters in Chicago and Champaign.