(FILES) In this file photo taken on November 5, 2010 Nobel-winning US novelist Toni Morrison (C) attends the unveiling ceremony of a memorial bench marking the abolition of slavery in Paris (the first to be inaugurated outside the United States by the Toni Morrison Society) in Paris. - Toni Morrison, the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, has died following a short illness, her family said in a statement on August 6, 2019. She was 88. "Although her passing represents a tremendous loss, we are grateful she had a long, well lived life," they said. (Photo by Franck FIFE / AFP)