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Beloved (1987), Toni Morrison

Summary: A freedwoman named Sethe faces the repercussions of her life as a runaway slave. Living in Cincinnati, she attempts to escape her pain with her 18-year-old daughter Denver. The trauma that haunts her and the ghosts of her past ignite a sinister force in her home that threatens to consume Sethe and her everyone close to her.  

Full review: Our trauma often haunts us in ways that manifests illness both mental, and sometimes physical. Depression, PTSD, and high blood pressure are but a few of the ways bad experiences can wreak havoc on our well-being. It could be something so seemingly “small” as being made fun of as a child for something we do not understand, or the much more societally accepted experiences of witnessing and experiencing violence, sexual trauma, or abuse.  

As a former slave, Sethe has seen all of these things. She is but one of the sixty million author Toni Morrison credits before the book opens, a tear drop in a sea of suffering experienced by those of African descent during colonialism.  

Prior to the events of the book, Sethe temporarily has one of the “good lives” those who still host weddings at plantations like to imagine comprise the experiences of former slaves. Her master treats his slaves with the only dignities afforded to African-Americans at the time, allowing the men to have informal marriages and buy out family members from their ownership. This peace does not last however, and Sethe is spurred to flee when she endures sexual and physical abuse at the hands of Schoolteacher, a sadistic enforcer who is the stuff of slavery trauma porn.  

With prose that is both ethereal and nightmarish, Morrison evokes the crushing weight of trauma, and the relentless haunting of fear. Even 19 years later, Sethe is ill at ease in her Ohio home, continuously preyed upon by the spirit of her dead daughter Beloved who perished some 20 years ago. Sethe’s love for her departed Beloved is a resilient force that prevents her from letting go, clinging to her so fiercely it drains her of her very essence the way grief does.  

The book explores the tenants central to colonialist-themed fiction: terror, abuse, resilience, and of course, oppression. Perhaps one of the most mesmerizing parts of this sad tale (aside from Morrison’s incredible writing) is the highlighting of the many sources of pain. Prejudice against Sethe exists not only from her white oppressors, but from her neighbors as well for reasons that are not wholly within her control. As former slaves they shun her for her misdeeds and the supposed offenses of her family. Even living in Cincinnati, the safety Sethe seeks as a black woman is limited solely to her status as a freed woman. The security of emotional support and well-being is denied to her in a world where African and Indigenous Americans had close to none.  

Beloved is a heavy book to get through, and it’s the mark of the late Morrison’s genius that she can weave such horrific words into such a beautiful yarn that inspires tears of both sadness and beauty.  

The book was adapted into a film in 1998 starting Donald Glover, Oprah Winfrey, and (then) newcomers Kimberly Elise and Thandiwe Newton. In the decades since it was published it has been honored as one of the most culturally significant works in modern history. Even in the depths of its brutality and sheer horror, there’s an unending beauty in Morrison’s words. Even while cursing the cruelty of white oppressors past and present, it’s hard not to praise Morrison for the way she wraps each thorny world in silk.  

It’s been 34 years since the book was first published, hailed as both brilliant and controversial. In the years since, the number of sixty million has continued to climb under the oppression of the modern era. With open eyes and hearts, Beloved is a must-read for any purveyor of racial equity. Read it with love, read it with pain, but read it for the ghosts past and present that continue to haunt.  

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