The peerless novelist and cultural commentator Toni Morrison, who has died aged 88, never accepted the received wisdom about anything.

In a writing career that spanned half a century – from the appearance of the first of her 11 novels, The Bluest Eye, in 1970, to that of her last essay collection, Mouth Full of Blood, in February 2019 – she unfailingly cast in new light both aspects of human experience and moments in American history that, in our complacency, we thought we already knew...