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laurenjullienne 's review for:
Beloved
by Toni Morrison
My first Toni Morrison book, and wow … an incredible introduction. Morrison’s writing is powerful, unflinching, melodic, and evokes all at once a kind of enduring hope that one never has to give up on deciding who they are, despite all that they face in a world that takes upon itself to decide it.
A book on survival, primarily, Beloved tells us what women, especially black women, already know of the world: Men are animals, and when women cannibalize themselves to be saved from becoming their prey, it is she who is considered monstrous. Sethe’s character might just be one of the most easily understood – if you can suspend, for a moment, the belief that there are things that “should be done in one way, and not the other.” Suspend a moral high ground and re-discover what it means to not even know freedom enough to want it for its sake. This is a story, not of the future, but of the past – and how far it travels when one cannot lay it to rest, cannot let it go for fear that everything else will go with it.
I recommend checking trigger warnings for this book, but also want to remind that these are realities that existed and in some parts of the world, continue to exist and to be disturbed by them is the point – and only the first step, really, of determining a place for yourself in the world that involves unlearning systems of violence, oppression, and discrimination.
A book on survival, primarily, Beloved tells us what women, especially black women, already know of the world: Men are animals, and when women cannibalize themselves to be saved from becoming their prey, it is she who is considered monstrous. Sethe’s character might just be one of the most easily understood – if you can suspend, for a moment, the belief that there are things that “should be done in one way, and not the other.” Suspend a moral high ground and re-discover what it means to not even know freedom enough to want it for its sake. This is a story, not of the future, but of the past – and how far it travels when one cannot lay it to rest, cannot let it go for fear that everything else will go with it.
I recommend checking trigger warnings for this book, but also want to remind that these are realities that existed and in some parts of the world, continue to exist and to be disturbed by them is the point – and only the first step, really, of determining a place for yourself in the world that involves unlearning systems of violence, oppression, and discrimination.