When Toni Morrison taught creative writing at Princeton University, she often told her students to “pay attention — not just to words, but to people.”
One of those students was MacKenzie Scott, who decades later would become one of the most generous philanthropists in modern history.
Long before she was known as the billionaire former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Scott was a young woman struggling to pay tuition and rent — and Morrison was her literary mentor, teaching her that empathy could be the most powerful form of storytelling.
That lesson, it turns out, became the foundation of how Scott now gives away her fortune.
From Classroom to Compassion
In a 2013 Vogue interview, Morrison called MacKenzie “one of the best students I’ve ever had.” Their connection went deeper than literature.
Morrison’s classes, known for their intensity and warmth, were about far more than writing — they were about listening. She taught her students to see the world through others’ eyes, to notice the quiet humanity in daily life, and never to confuse power with purpose.
Those ideals would follow Scott long after she left Princeton.
Before college, her family had declared bankruptcy after her father’s investment company collapsed. In a personal essay titled “No Dollar Signs This Time”, Scott remembered the kindness of strangers who helped her stay in school — a roommate’s $1,000 loan, a local dentist’s free dental work, acts of grace that mirrored Morrison’s belief in human interdependence.
“When you don’t have much, generosity becomes sacred,” Scott once wrote.
By her sophomore year, she was already sharing her writing with Morrison. Their letters — now archived in the Toni Morrison Papers at Princeton’s Firestone Library — reveal the mentorship that shaped her life.
A Letter That Changed Everything
After graduating in 1992, Scott worked long shifts as a waitress in New York while still writing on the side. In one letter to Morrison, she confided that she was exhausted and uncertain about her future.
Months later, she applied for a job at D.E. Shaw, a hedge fund, where Morrison gave her a glowing phone recommendation.
That call would prove fateful.
When Jeff Bezos, then an executive at the firm, read Morrison’s words, he hired Scott. The two would eventually marry in 1993 and move to Seattle, where they built the foundations of Amazon together.
By 2019, when Scott and Bezos divorced, she had signed The Giving Pledge, vowing to give away the majority of her wealth “to serve others.” As of November 2025, she has donated more than $19.25 billion through her nonprofit, Yield Giving.
Her gifts have supported schools, food banks, housing programs, and public health initiatives. She’s donated over $1 billion to Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) — a gesture many see as a living echo of Morrison’s commitment to Black excellence and education.
The Spirit of Morrison Lives On
Toni Morrison, who passed away in 2019 at age 88, became the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Her work — Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye — explored the pain and beauty of the human condition with unmatched empathy.
That same empathy seems to pulse through Scott’s philanthropy. Where Morrison revealed the unseen struggles of ordinary people, Scott writes her own story of giving through action, often bypassing bureaucracy to send unrestricted funds directly to grassroots organizations.
“She learned from Toni that people’s stories matter,” said one former classmate of Scott’s. “That’s the same principle she applies to her giving — she sees the humanity first.”
A Circle Completed
In many ways, Morrison’s influence on Scott has come full circle. The teacher who once encouraged a young writer to see the world’s invisible battles has, indirectly, helped millions through her student’s generosity.
Scott, now an author herself — of The Testing of Luther Albright (2005) and Traps (2013) — continues to describe her life’s mission not as charity, but as connection.
“Toni Morrison believed that words could heal,” reads one note found among Scott’s correspondence in the Princeton archive. “Maybe now I understand — it wasn’t just about writing them. It was about living them.”
Legacy of a Teacher
Toni Morrison’s influence on American letters is well-documented. But her influence on American lives — through her students, her compassion, and her unwavering faith in empathy — might be her quietest, and most enduring, masterpiece.
And in the billions MacKenzie Scott gives away, Morrison’s voice still whispers:
Pay attention. Listen deeply. Tell the truth.
