Of the 119 Nobel prizes for literature that have been given between 1900 and 2022 only 17 have been given to women . We will be reading four women who wrote in English: NADINE GORDIMER 1991, TONI MORRISON 1993, DORIS LESSING 2007, and ALICE MUNRO 2013.
Together their lives and work stretch over a century. Their styles are different but their writings reflect the time and place they come from. Each of these brilliant women wrote insightful fiction about people's lives, family issues, problems, joys, life and death. Whether the characters live in China, London, South Africa or Ohio--their issues are about staying alive through relationships, wars and drought that change their lives.
In 1991, Nadine Gordimer won the Nobel Prize in Literature for her writing of numerous books and stories about life in South Africa in her beautiful poetic language.
In 1993 Toni Morrison became the first African American to win the Nobel for her novels about the black experience in America.
Doris Lessing wrote bluntly and brilliantly all her long life about women's lives and their relationships with men but did not win the Nobel until she was 88 in 2007.
Canadian Alice Munro has also continuously presented the twists and turns of girls' and women's lives throughout the social changes of the 20th century. She developed her own thoughtful rendition of the long, short story for which she received the Nobel Prize in 2013.
