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A review by courtneydoss
Beloved by Toni Morrison
5.0
I think that this might be one of the saddest books that I have ever read. Pain falls from the pages like sticky syrup, onto your fingers and up your forearms. It stains your skin and leaves a hollowness in you that can never be filled. It is a ghost story, but more than that it is a story about the horror of slavery, and the ways it affected the minds of those brutalized by it. Toni Morrison, as a black woman, sings the tragedy of her ancestors; those whose stories she could never know. Through Sethe and Denver and Baby Suggs, she pays tribute to those that history has forgotten and reminds all who read it that while the body may be freed, the mind remains in chains.
What fascinates me about Beloved is that it is one of the only ghost stories that centralizes a black person. Last year I read one of my favorite non-fiction books entitled Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places. It was a thoroughly researched study on American folklore and the way our ghost stories speak to the values of our culture. One observation in this book was that the enslavement of black people and the genocide of Native Americans are often overlooked in our folklore.
In that book, Colin Dickey argues this point by referencing the ghost tour circuit in a port city that was once the largest market for enslaved Africans. As a city whose history is centered around the brutal dehumanization of black people, these ghost tours are distinctly lacking in black ghosts. In places where black ghosts are present in tours, they are often fictionalized stories that perpetuate stereotypes about black men and women; the Jezebel or Mammy archetypes given a name and tragic backstory that is entirely made up. Beloved is nothing like these stories. It is so much more humanizing, so much more heartfelt than any of that, and that is why it is such a classic.
Although this story focuses on the physical manifestation of a child ghost in the little home of Sethe and her daughter Denver, it really tells the story of a woman grappling with the trauma of her past, and the way that trauma drives a wedge between her and her born-free daughter. It analyzes the way trauma slithers like a snake through multiple generations, and lingers in the blood like a virus -- effecting the descendants of those who were enslaved long after the institution itself had been abolished.
I think this book, in this day and age (and maybe forever), should be required reading for every non-black person in America. There are so many people in this country who have pulled the wool over their eyes and deliberately ignored the ways institutionalized racism has effected our nation. In Beloved, Toni Morrison describes a character's walk away from slavery when they were finally, legally freed; the bodies of black men, women, and children littering the side of the roadways, because the white people of the time would rather they be dead than free. It is a powerful reminder that while slavery itself may have ended, the cultural opinions that paved the way for it to happen in the first place didn't just disappear.
This book is an emotionally difficult read, but I think that it is worth it. 5-stars, all the way.
What fascinates me about Beloved is that it is one of the only ghost stories that centralizes a black person. Last year I read one of my favorite non-fiction books entitled Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places. It was a thoroughly researched study on American folklore and the way our ghost stories speak to the values of our culture. One observation in this book was that the enslavement of black people and the genocide of Native Americans are often overlooked in our folklore.
In that book, Colin Dickey argues this point by referencing the ghost tour circuit in a port city that was once the largest market for enslaved Africans. As a city whose history is centered around the brutal dehumanization of black people, these ghost tours are distinctly lacking in black ghosts. In places where black ghosts are present in tours, they are often fictionalized stories that perpetuate stereotypes about black men and women; the Jezebel or Mammy archetypes given a name and tragic backstory that is entirely made up. Beloved is nothing like these stories. It is so much more humanizing, so much more heartfelt than any of that, and that is why it is such a classic.
Although this story focuses on the physical manifestation of a child ghost in the little home of Sethe and her daughter Denver, it really tells the story of a woman grappling with the trauma of her past, and the way that trauma drives a wedge between her and her born-free daughter. It analyzes the way trauma slithers like a snake through multiple generations, and lingers in the blood like a virus -- effecting the descendants of those who were enslaved long after the institution itself had been abolished.
I think this book, in this day and age (and maybe forever), should be required reading for every non-black person in America. There are so many people in this country who have pulled the wool over their eyes and deliberately ignored the ways institutionalized racism has effected our nation. In Beloved, Toni Morrison describes a character's walk away from slavery when they were finally, legally freed; the bodies of black men, women, and children littering the side of the roadways, because the white people of the time would rather they be dead than free. It is a powerful reminder that while slavery itself may have ended, the cultural opinions that paved the way for it to happen in the first place didn't just disappear.
This book is an emotionally difficult read, but I think that it is worth it. 5-stars, all the way.