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A review by spookybookwitch
Beloved by Toni Morrison
5.0
There isn’t really anything I could possibly say that wouldn’t have already been said by someone with more literary criticism chops than I have. I’m gonna add my own thoughts however, because I’m the only one who can express those, I suppose.
I went into this expecting a ghost story set against the backdrop of the horrific time period of American slavery — and this was that.
But it was also so much more.
This book examines the…I’d say horror but that doesn’t feel like a strong enough word…of slavery and how the horror doesn’t leave just because a former slave is freed. How even those who were never enslaved — Denver — still carry those generational wounds and trauma. It examines the trauma caused by such an “institution” in a way that is both unflinching in its honesty and yet, compassionate toward the characters.
Side note: Beloved made me consider how the echoes of my own history might affect me and the way I interact with the world. My family were indentured servants looong ago, victims of widespread anti-Irish sentiment a little more recently, and most recently, my mother’s parents were sent to a “foster” home in the late 1930/40s after their own parents abandoned them — and they were, more or less, indentured themselves by their “foster parents”. It made me wonder if my own fears of abandonment, and my own drive to succeed at all costs, are impacted by the echoes of the past. Of course they are.
But that’s not to say this book is about me by any means at all — it’s to say that OF COURSE relations between Black and white people in 2023 USA are impacted, by what transpired 160ish years ago. Time doesn’t heal all wounds. I don’t have the answer for healing what happened, for repairing the divide — but I do think part of it is facing what happened instead of burying it in the tin tobacco boxes of our collective memories.
And this also isn’t to say I completely got the point. I’m a white girl from Maine, my family mostly hanging around Canada until the 1920s. I acknowledge that there’s probably plenty else in this book that someone with my frame of reference wouldn’t pick up on. But I am smart enough to recognize this is a FANTASTIC book, and I recommend it to everyone. Everyone.
Anyway. That’s a lot of words to say: please read this book.
I went into this expecting a ghost story set against the backdrop of the horrific time period of American slavery — and this was that.
But it was also so much more.
This book examines the…I’d say horror but that doesn’t feel like a strong enough word…of slavery and how the horror doesn’t leave just because a former slave is freed. How even those who were never enslaved — Denver — still carry those generational wounds and trauma. It examines the trauma caused by such an “institution” in a way that is both unflinching in its honesty and yet, compassionate toward the characters.
Side note: Beloved made me consider how the echoes of my own history might affect me and the way I interact with the world. My family were indentured servants looong ago, victims of widespread anti-Irish sentiment a little more recently, and most recently, my mother’s parents were sent to a “foster” home in the late 1930/40s after their own parents abandoned them — and they were, more or less, indentured themselves by their “foster parents”. It made me wonder if my own fears of abandonment, and my own drive to succeed at all costs, are impacted by the echoes of the past. Of course they are.
But that’s not to say this book is about me by any means at all — it’s to say that OF COURSE relations between Black and white people in 2023 USA are impacted, by what transpired 160ish years ago. Time doesn’t heal all wounds. I don’t have the answer for healing what happened, for repairing the divide — but I do think part of it is facing what happened instead of burying it in the tin tobacco boxes of our collective memories.
And this also isn’t to say I completely got the point. I’m a white girl from Maine, my family mostly hanging around Canada until the 1920s. I acknowledge that there’s probably plenty else in this book that someone with my frame of reference wouldn’t pick up on. But I am smart enough to recognize this is a FANTASTIC book, and I recommend it to everyone. Everyone.
Anyway. That’s a lot of words to say: please read this book.