Louisiana author Ernest J. Gaines and Nobel Prize-winning writer Toni Morrison will be honored on new U.S. postage stamp designs in 2023, the U.S. Postal Service has announced.
Gaines, who is best known for his novels “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” “A Lesson Before Dying” and “A Gathering of Old Men,” was the fifth generation of a sharecropper family to be born on a plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish.
Gaines gained critical and popular acclaim with “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” a 1971 novel narrated by a 110-year-old former slave. The 1974 movie adaptation won nine Emmy Awards, including Cicely Tyson’s Best Actress Award for the title role.
Gaines’ image will be on the 46th stamp in the Black Heritage series. The stamp features an oil painting of Gaines, based on a 2001 photograph. Gaines died in November 2019 at the age of 86.
Morrison, who was the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993, is known for her books “The Bluest Eye,” “Song of Solomon” and “Beloved.” Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for “Beloved,” a 1987 novel based on the true story of an African American enslaved woman.
The stamp features a photograph of Morrison taken in 2000. Morrison died in August 2019 at the age of 88.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
