A Review of Toni Morrisons Beloved
Beloved is an important novel. I stand firmly in my belief that If you want to learn more about black history and culture, you must read and revel yourself in the world of black fiction. Our folktales and big ole lies are right at your finger tips, having been told by the world’s most powerful griots. Do not take for granted the works of Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Lusiah Teish, Octavia butler and many many more. When you feel saddened by the very limited knowledge that is available to you regarding your bloodline- you will find your history in books. fiction books.
Set in southern Ohio, Toni Morrison wonderfully depicts both the beauties and the atrocities of life after slavery in America. Yes, I said beauties. There was love and there was fear. There was community and there was isolation. Ways of living that were set in stone, set by generations that had come and gone. Beloved is a perfectly told tale of the power of the matriach. Generations of women and children living and surviving under one roof, 124.
Toni Morrison teaches us that fiction isn’t so fictitious after all. For black people it is where we hide our culture so beautifully in plain sight. There are great stories and tales that are often overlooked by others and disregarded as just “folktales”. Unbeknownst to most, there is truth in our fiction. Life breeding in all that seems to not be living, just like the spirit of beloved.
Toni writes about the unimaginable. A precious child slain by her protector. Her own mother. She gave her life and then took that very same breath away. Sethe is forever haunted by the shame and fear of her heinous crime.
This novel prompts us to address post slavery realities, many of which challenge us with questions revolving black motherhood. What does it mean to be a black mother? What traumas are attached to black motherhood? seen and unseen?
No, sethe did not have to take her child’s life. But fear does that to you, it kills. Shame too. Sethe represents black mothers everywhere. Murder is not the only crime. There are spiritual deaths, soul sucking crimes and what’s life with no spirit? No soul? The lives of many black children have been taken by those meant to love them the most. Whether by means of snatching their childlike joy, creativity or their literal lives. The festered resentment that haunted generations before us, still haunts us now.
The final and most important question that beloved prompts is- how do we as black women begin to heal?