Toni Morrison wrote the introduction to American Masters – The Women’s List, which she also read and recorded for the film. The author of many critically acclaimed novels, Morrison received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 for Beloved and in 1993 received the Nobel Prize for Literature. The Nobel Prize committee cited that Morrison, “in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality.”

Introduction to The Women’s List

It’s sometimes surprising to discover the cumulative progress women have made in recent times. Just think, what field has not been enriched by females in art, theater, finance, politics, law, entrepreneurship, science.

The list is as impressive as it is enlightening. To realize that we’re no longer pioneers, the startling exception, the first to fly, or swim or sail prodigious distances in bad weather. No longer the first to be elected, the first to discover cures in medicine or the first to untangle problems in science, math or physics.

No. We are multitudes, and society is clearly the better for our peaceful invasion.

There is no modernity and no justice without the talent, the passion and the steely intelligence of women.

American Masters: The Women’s List, premieres nationwide Friday, September 25, 9-10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings).