We get it. Really, we do. Changing careers mid-stream can seem daunting or downright foolish to some. It’s easy to buy into the “it’s too late” mantra. This month we’re debunking that myth. Calling its bluff. Reminding women that it’s never too late to pursue your dream. As we showed you last week, for a pioneering comic like Phyllis Diller, a midlife job swap led to her success. She blazed a trail for us in more ways than one. But, Diller is far from alone.
She had the personality to make a big splash but not all of our forerunners are the type to take the spotlight in that way. Some women take a quieter, more contemplative approach to their craft. Such was the path for Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Beloved and the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. This week’s focus is on author Toni Morrison who started her professional career as an English professor in Texas, and then taught in Washington, D.C. In her 30s, she moved to New York to become an editor at Random House (first working on textbooks and then moving on to a senior editor position).
She published her first novel, The Bluest Eye, at age 40! This year, Toni turned 86 and she is definitely not finished with her life’s work. According to the official website of the Toni Morrison Society, she worked on several writing projects this winter, including the completion of her 12th novel! (Did we mention that she is 86?)
She was honored this March in an exhibit in the United Nations Lobby as part of a series of United Nations programs highlighting its annual International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. This month is just as busy as she will be awarded the Emerson-Thoreau Medal from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and she will receive the 2017 Distinguished Service to the Library Community from the Authors Guild in New York City.
If there is a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, you must be the one to write it. – Toni Morrison
To say that she is an inspiration to all of us who have dreams and hopes, is an understatement. She reminds us that it is, indeed, NEVER too late to pursue your passions. In fact, her later-in-life successes are so noteworthy that Stephen Colbert once asked Morrison, “Is your entire literary career a midlife crisis?” (Intrigued? You can watch the entire, delightful interview with Colbert here.)
