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Beloved - My honest review - Likes and dislikesGaming Indoors

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Beloved: Pulitzer Prize Winner Paperback – Unabridged, June 8, 2004

by Toni Morrison (Author)

4.4 18,714 ratings

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Pulitzer PrizeWinner, 1988

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PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A spellbinding novel that transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. With a new afterword by the author.

This "brutally powerful, mesmerizing story” (People) is an unflinchingly look into the abyss of slavery, from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner.

Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. Sethe has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.

“A masterwork.... Wonderful.... I can’t imagine American literature without it.” —John Leonard, Los Angeles Times

From the Publisher

WARNING: California’s Proposition 65

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A masterwork. . . . Wonderful. . . . I can’t imagine American literature without it.” —John Leonard, Los Angeles Times

“A triumph.” —Margaret Atwood, The New York Times Book Review

“Toni Morrison’s finest work. . . . [It] sets her apart [and] displays her prodigious talent.” —Chicago Sun-Times

“Dazzling. . . . Magical. . . . An extraordinary work.” —The New York Times

“A masterpiece. . . . Magnificent. . . . Astounding. . . . Overpowering.” —Newsweek

“Brilliant. . . . Resonates from past to present.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“A brutally powerful, mesmerizing story. . . . Read it and tremble.” —People

“Toni Morrison is not just an important contemporary novelist but a major figure in our national literature.” —New York Review of Books

“A work of genuine force. . . . Beautifully written.” —The Washington Post

“There is something great in Beloved: a play of human voices, consciously exalted, perversely stressed, yet holding true. It gets you.” —The New Yorker

“A magnificent heroine . . . a glorious book.” —The Baltimore Sun

“Superb. . . . A profound and shattering story that carries the weight of history. . . . Exquisitely told.” —Cosmopolitan

“Magical . . . rich, provocative, extremely satisfying.” —Milwaukee Journal

“Beautifully written. . . . Powerful. . . . Toni Morrison has become one of America’s finest novelists.” —The Plain Dealer

“Stunning. . . A lasting achievement.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“Written with a force rarely seen in contemporary fiction. . . . One feels deep admiration.” —USA Today

“Compelling . . . . Morrison shakes that brilliant kaleidoscope of hers again, and the story of pain, endurance, poetry and power she is born to tell comes right out.” —The Village Voice

“A book worth many rereadings.” —Glamour

“In her most probing novel, Toni Morrison has demonstrated once again the stunning powers that place her in the first ranks of our living novelists.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Heart-wrenching . . . mesmerizing.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

“Shattering emotional power and impact.” —New York Daily News

“A rich, mythical novel . . . a triumph.” —St. Petersburg Times

“Powerful . . . voluptuous.” —New York

From the Inside Flap

Toni Morrison's magnificent Pulitzer Prize-winning novel--first published in 1987--brought the unimaginable experience of slavery into the literature of our time and into our comprehension. Set in post-Civil War Ohio, it is the story of Sethe, an escaped slave who has risked her life in order to wrench herself from a living death; who has lost a husband and buried a child; who has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad. Sethe, who now lives in a small house on the edge of town with her daughter, Denver, her mother-in-law, Baby Suggs, and a disturbing, mesmerizing apparition who calls herself Beloved.

Sethe works at "beating back the past," but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly: in her memory; in Denver's fear of the world outside the house; in the sadness that consumes Baby Suggs; in the arrival of Paul D, a fellow former slave; and, most powerfully, in Beloved, whose childhood belongs to the hideous logic of slavery and who has now come from the "place over there" to claim retribution for what she lost and for what was taken from her. Sethe's struggle to keep Beloved from gaining possession of her present--and to throw off the long-dark legacy of her past--is at the center of this spellbinding novel. But it also moves beyond its particulars, combining imagination and the vision of legend with the unassailable truths of history.
Upon the original publication of Beloved, John Leonard wrote in the Los Angeles Times: "I can't imagine American literature without it." In fact, more than a decade later, it remains a preeminent novel of our time, speaking with timeless clarity and power to our experience as a nation with a past of both abominable and ennobling circumstance.

From the Hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And Sethe's new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved" is a towering achievement.

About the Author

TONI MORRISON is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She died in 2019.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I

124 WAS SPITEFUL. Full of a baby's venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims. The grandmother, Baby Suggs, was dead, and the sons, Howard and Buglar, had run away by the time they were thirteen years old--as soon as merely looking in a mirror shattered it (that was the signal for Buglar); as soon as two tiny band prints appeared in the cake (that was it for Howard). Neither boy waited to see more; another kettleful of chickpeas smoking in a heap on the floor; soda crackers crumbled and strewn in a line next to the doorsill. Nor did they wait for one of the relief periods: the weeks, months even, when nothing was disturbed. No. Each one fled at once--the moment the house committed what was for him the one insult not to be borne or witnessed a second time. Within two months, in the dead of winter, leaving their grandmother, Baby Suggs; Sethe, their mother; and their little sister, Denver, all by themselves in the gray and white house on Bluestone Road. It didn't have a number then, because Cincinnati didn't stretch that far. In fact, Ohio had been calling itself a state only seventy years when first one brother and then the next stuffed quilt packing into his hat, snatched up his shoes, and crept away from the lively spite the house felt for them.

Baby Suggs didn't even raise her head. From her sickbed she heard them go but that wasn't the reason she lay still. It was a wonder to her that her grandsons had taken so long to realize that every house wasn't like the one on Bluestone Road. Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn't get interested in leaving life or living it, let alone the fright of two creeping-off boys. Her past had been like her present--intolerable--and since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color.

"Bring a little lavender in, if you got any. Pink, if you don't."

And Sethe would oblige her with anything from fabric to her own tongue. Winter in Ohio was especially rough if you had an appetite for color. Sky provided the only drama, and counting on a Cincinnati horizon for life's principal joy was reckless indeed. So Sethe and the girl Denver did what they could, and what the house permitted, for her. Together they waged a perfunctory battle against the outrageous behavior of that place; against turned-over slop jars, smacks on the behind, and gusts of sour air. For they understood the source of the outrage as well as they knew the source of light.

Baby Suggs died shortly after the brothers left, with no interest whatsoever in their leave-taking or hers, and right afterward Sethe and Denver decided to end the persecution by calling forth the ghost that tried them so. Perhaps a conversation, they thought, an exchange of views or something would help. So they held hands and said, "Come on. Come on. You may as well just come on."

The sideboard took a step forward but nothing else did.

"Grandma Baby must be stopping it," said Denver. She was ten and still mad at Baby Suggs for dying.

Sethe opened her eyes. "I doubt that," she said.

"Then why don't it come?"

"You forgetting how little it is," said her mother. "She wasn't even two years old when she died. Too little to understand. Too little to talk much even."

"Maybe she don't want to understand," said Denver.

"Maybe. But if she'd only come, I could make it clear to her." Sethe released her daughter's hand and together they pushed the sideboard back against the wall. Outside a driver whipped his horse into the gallop local people felt necessary when they passed 124.

"For a baby she throws a powerful spell," said Denver.

"No more powerful than the way I loved her," Sethe answered and there it was again. The welcoming cool of unchiseled headstones; the one she selected to lean against on tiptoe, her knees wide open as any grave. Pink as a fingernail it was, and sprinkled with glittering chips. Ten minutes, he said. You got ten minutes I'll do it for free.

Ten minutes for seven letters. With another ten could she have gotten "Dearly" too? She had not thought to ask him and it bothered her still that it might have been possible--that for twenty minutes, a half hour, say, she could have had the whole thing, every word she heard the preacher say at the funeral (and all there was to say, surely) engraved on her baby's headstone: Dearly Beloved. But what she got, settled for, was the one word that mattered. She thought it would be enough, rutting among the headstones with the engraver, his young son looking on, the anger in his face so old; the appetite in it quite new. That should certainly be enough. Enough to answer one more preacher, one more abolitionist and a town full of disgust.

Counting on the stillness of her own soul, she had forgotten the other one: the soul of her baby girl. Who would have thought that a little old baby could harbor so much rage? Rutting among the stones under the eyes of the engraver's son was not enough. Not only did she have to live out her years in a house palsied by the baby's fury at having its throat cut, but those ten minutes she spent pressed up against dawn-colored stone studded with star chips, her knees wide open as the grave, were longer than life, more alive, more pulsating than the baby blood that soaked her fingers like oil.

"We could move," she suggested once to her mother-in-law.

"What'd be the point?" asked Baby Suggs. "Not a house in the country ain't packed to its rafters with some dead Negro's grief. We lucky this ghost is a baby. My husband's spirit was to come back in here? or yours? Don't talk to me. You lucky. You got three left. Three pulling at your skirts and just one raising hell from the other side. Be thankful, why don't you? I had eight. Every one of them gone away from me. Four taken, four chased, and all, I expect, worrying somebody's house into evil." Baby Suggs rubbed her eyebrows. "My firstborn. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember."

"That's all you let yourself remember," Sethe had told her, but she was down to one herself--one alive, that is--the boys chased off by the dead one, and her memory of Buglar was fading fast. Howard at least had a head shape nobody could forget. As for the rest, she worked hard to remember as close to nothing as was safe. Unfortunately her brain was devious. She might be hurrying across a field, running practically, to get to the pump quickly and rinse the chamomile sap from her legs. Nothing else would be in her mind. The picture of the men coming to nurse her was as lifeless as the nerves in her back where the skin buckled like a washboard. Nor was there the faintest scent of ink or the cherry gum and oak bark from which it was made. Nothing. Just the breeze cooling her face as she rushed toward water. And then sopping the chamomile away with pump water and rags, her mind fixed on getting every last bit of sap off--on her carelessness in taking a shortcut across the field just to save a half mile, and not noticing how high the weeds had grown until the itching was all the way to her knees. Then something. The plash of water, the sight of her shoes and stockings awry on the path where she had flung them; or Here Boy lapping in the puddle near her feet, and suddenly there was Sweet Home rolling, rolling, rolling out before her eyes, and although there was not a leaf on that farm that did not make her want to scream, it rolled itself out before her in shameless beauty. It never looked as terrible as it was and it made her wonder if hell was a pretty place too. Fire and brimstone all right, but hidden in lacy groves. Boys hanging from the most beautiful sycamores in the world. It shamed her--remembering the wonderful soughing trees rather than the boys. Try as she might to make it otherwise, the sycamores beat out the children every time and she could not forgive her memory for that.

When the last of the chamomile was gone, she went around to the front of the house, collecting her shoes and stockings on the way. As if to punish her further for her terrible memory, sitting on the porch not forty feet away was Paul D, the last of the Sweet Home men. And although she could never mistake his face for another's, she said, "Is that you?"

"What's left." He stood up and smiled. "How you been, girl, besides barefoot?"

When she laughed it came out loose and young. "Messed up my legs back yonder. Chamomile."

He made a face as though tasting a teaspoon of something bitter. "I don't want to even hear 'bout it. Always did hate that stuff."

Sethe balled up her stockings and jammed them into her pocket. "Come on in."

"Porch is fine, Sethe. Cool out here." He sat back down and looked at the meadow on the other side of the road, knowing the eagerness he felt would be in his eyes.

"Eighteen years," she said softly.

"Eighteen," he repeated. "And I swear I been walking every one of em. Mind if I join you?" He nodded toward her feet and began unlacing his shoes.

"You want to soak them? Let me get you a basin of water." She moved closer to him to enter the house.

"No, uh uh. Can't baby feet. A whole lot more tramping they got to do yet."

"You can't leave right away, Paul D. You got to stay awhile."

"Well, long enough to see Baby Suggs, anyway. Where is she?"

''Dead.''

"Aw no. When?"

"Eight years now. Almost nine."

"Was it hard? I hope she didn't die hard."

Sethe shook her head. "Soft as cream. Being alive was the hard part. Sorry you missed her though. Is that what you came by for?"

"That's some of what I came for. The rest is you. But if all the truth be known, I go anywhere these days. Anywhere they let me sit down."

"You looking good."

"Devil's confusion. He lets me look good long as I feel bad." He looked at her and the word "bad" took on another meaning.

Sethe smiled. This is the way they were--had been. All of the Sweet Home men, before and after Halle, treated her to a mild brotherly flirtation, so subtle you had to scratch for it.

Except for a heap more hair and some waiting in his eyes, he looked the way he had in Kentucky. Peachstone skin; straight-backed. For a man with an immobile face it was amazing how ready it was to smile, or blaze or be sorry with you. As though all you had to do was get his attention and right away he produced the feeling you were feeling. With less than a blink, his face seemed to change--underneath it lay the activity.

"I wouldn't have to ask about him, would I? You'd tell me if there was anything to tell, wouldn't you?" Sethe looked down at her feet and saw again the sycamores.

"I'd tell you. Sure I'd tell you. I don't know any more now than I did then." Except for the churn, he thought, and you don't need to know that. "You must think he's still alive."

"No. I think he's dead. It's not being sure that keeps him alive."

"What did Baby Suggs think?"

"Same, but to listen to her, all her children is dead. Claimed she felt each one go the very day and hour."

"When she say Halle went?"

"Eighteen fifty-five. The day my baby was born."

"You had that baby, did you? Never thought you'd make it." He chuckled. "Running off pregnant."

"Had to. Couldn't be no waiting." She lowered her head and thought, as he did, how unlikely it was that she had made it. And if it hadn't been for that girl looking for velvet, she never would have.

"All by yourself too." He was proud of her and annoyed by her. Proud she had done it; annoyed that she had not needed Halle or him in the doing.

"Almost by myself. Not all by myself. A whitegirl helped me."

"Then she helped herself too, God bless her."

"You could stay the night, Paul D."

"You don't sound too steady in the offer."

Sethe glanced beyond his shoulder toward the closed door. "Oh it's truly meant. I just hope you'll pardon my house. Come on in. Talk to Denver while I cook you something."

Paul D tied his shoes together, hung them over his shoulder and followed her through the door straight into a pool of red and undulating light that locked him where he stood.

"You got company?" he whispered, frowning.

"Off and on," said Sethe.

"Good God." He backed out the door onto the porch. "What kind of evil you got in here?"

"It's not evil, just sad. Come on. Just step through."

He looked at her then, closely. Closer than he had when she first rounded the house on wet and shining legs, holding her shoes and stockings up in one hand, her skirts in the other. Halle's girl--the one with iron eyes and backbone to match. He had never seen her hair in Kentucky. And though her face was eighteen years older than when last he saw her, it was softer now. Because of the hair. A face too still for comfort; irises the same color as her skin, which, in that still face, used to make him think of a mask with mercifully punched-out eyes. Halle's woman. Pregnant every year including the year she sat by the fire telling him she was going to run. Her three children she had already packed into a wagonload of others in a caravan of Negroes crossing the river. They were to be left with Halle's mother near Cincinnati. Even in that tiny shack, leaning so close to the fire you could smell the heat in her dress, her eyes did not pick up a flicker of light. They were like two wells into which he had trouble gazing. Even punched out they needed to be covered, lidded, marked with some sign to warn folks of what that emptiness held. So he looked instead at the fire while she told him, because her husband was not there for the telling. Mr. Garner was dead and his wife had a lump in her neck the size of a sweet potato and unable to speak to anyone. She leaned as close to the fire as her pregnant belly allowed and told him, Paul D, the last of the Sweet Home men.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (June 8, 2004)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 321 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1400033411
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1400033416
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 1 year and up
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 870L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.1 x 0.72 x 7.97 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #643 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #12 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #27 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
- #106 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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Toni Morrison

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Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She is the author of several novels, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved (made into a major film), and Love. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize. She is the Robert F. Goheen Professor at Princeton University.

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Customers find the book an unforgettable and heartbreaking read. They describe the storyline as rich in history and original. The author is praised as awesome, inspirational, and a must-read for anyone interested in American literature. Readers praise the well-developed characters and empathy for them. However, opinions differ on the writing quality - some find it poetic and visual, while others find it not straightforward.

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414 customers mention "Readability"405 positive9 negative

Customers find the book an engaging read with a vivid story and emotional journey. They praise the writing as excellent and the plot as gripping. The book is described as magical, horrific, beautiful, and ugly. It's a great choice for train or bus rides.

"...in 1993, it was said that her novels were characterized by " visionary force and poetic import” and that she “gives life to an essential aspect of..." Read more

"Beloved by Toni Morrison is a dramatic historical fiction published in 1987 by Vintage Books...." Read more

"...The characters are well written, the plot was excellent, the writing was fantastic and I found myself not wanting to put this book down...." Read more

"...the struggle for identity resonate deeply, making this book an unforgettable read...." Read more

119 customers mention "Heartbreaking"90 positive29 negative

Customers find the book an emotional journey and experience. They describe it as a hauntingly painful story about love in the deepest way. The book explores memory, trauma, and enduring scars with beauty in its prose and empathy for how we think is worth it.

"A hauntingly beautiful exploration of the complexities of memory, trauma, and the enduring scars of slavery...." Read more

"...on our most powerful emotions: familial love, overwhelming anger, deepest regret, and the yearning for peace. This is why I give Beloved FIVE STARS." Read more

"...Beloved is a very powerful and emotional journey and experience...." Read more

"...I felt uncomfortable throughout the novel because of the excessive amounts of rape and because of some of Sethe’s decisions throughout some of the..." Read more

54 customers mention "Storyline"39 positive15 negative

Customers enjoy the storyline. They find it rich in history, with vivid imagery and remembrances from the period before World War I. The book provides a sensitive and shocking view of mid-19th century life. It is sometimes creepy, nostalgic, and sad, transporting readers to a different time and place.

"...It’s a book that lingers in your mind long after you’ve turned the last page...." Read more

"...The novel Beloved is a magical, horrific, beautiful and ugly story of death, extreme love, slavery, and redemption that touches on our most powerful..." Read more

"...writing, where events are sometimes confused and present events are mixed with past ones repeatedly on top of the slavery distorted English and..." Read more

"...post Civil War Ohio, with numerous flashbacks and remembrances from the period preceding the War...." Read more

41 customers mention "Author"41 positive0 negative

Customers praise the author's writing style and literary merit. They find the book an important read for anyone interested in American literature or history. The language is described as unique and unmatched.

"...people of all ages, but I feel like it is particularly important for white children to read...." Read more

"...It's also a wonderful piece of American Minority Literature. I would recommend it to anyone and everyone. It's simply fantastic." Read more

"Toni Morrison is an awesome author who creates a picture or imprint on your mind as you read the book...." Read more

"Morrison’s command of language is unparalleled and uniquely hers...." Read more

40 customers mention "Character development"30 positive10 negative

Customers find the characters well-developed and insightful. They feel empathy for the characters and their situations.

"...As shocking as it was, I did enjoy this read. The characters are well written, the plot was excellent, the writing was fantastic and I found myself..." Read more

"...Each character feels vividly real, grappling with their pain and longing for freedom, both physical and emotional...." Read more

"...With the timeline jumping all over the place and characters reappearing in the story when they had died previously...." Read more

"...Give yourself to the beautiful writing and warm characters...." Read more

298 customers mention "Writing quality"160 positive138 negative

Customers have different views on the writing quality. Some find the writing poetic and visual, praising the author's effort. However, others find the style confusing, unsettling, and difficult to follow. The language is not considered bad, but it does reflect the times.

"...said that her novels were characterized by " visionary force and poetic import” and that she “gives life to an essential aspect of American reality."..." Read more

"...This was my first Toni Morrison book and I found it to be very difficult to follow, made even more challenging, I think, by Ms. Morrison narrating..." Read more

"...The characters are well written, the plot was excellent, the writing was fantastic and I found myself not wanting to put this book down...." Read more

"...It took me a chapter or two to get into this book, the writing wasn’t as straightforward as I expected...." Read more

148 customers mention "Story quality"87 positive61 negative

Customers have different views on the story's quality. Some find it an incredible depiction of life after slavery and relationships, describing it as thoughtful and a masterclass in fiction. Others find the events unsettling and confusing, tugging at their heartstrings.

"...The themes of motherhood, loss, and the struggle for identity resonate deeply, making this book an unforgettable read...." Read more

"...Though these are unsettling events in the book, they are also very important to convey the atrocities that slaves were subject to...." Read more

"...a magical, horrific, beautiful and ugly story of death, extreme love, slavery, and redemption that touches on our most powerful emotions: familial..." Read more

"...A masterclass in fiction." Read more

114 customers mention "Insight"78 positive36 negative

Customers have different views on the book's insights. Some find it insightful and educational, with clear meaning and lessons. Others find the analysis too deep and challenging to understand in parts. The book is described as complex and difficult to describe, with some finding too many allusions at the beginning.

"...Many themes are present in this novel, though I feel the most important ones are running from the past and inferiority...." Read more

"...What struck me most was how Morrison masterfully intertwines the personal with the historical, creating a poignant commentary on the legacies of..." Read more

"...are described in such an offhand way that you have to read the sentence twice to be sure it says what you think it says, and the timeline is..." Read more

"...the novel that are open to interpretations both symbolically and metaphorically. Beloved is a novel that shifts and moves around in time and space...." Read more

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I Love Toni Morrison!
Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2023
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Beloved by Toni Morrison
“Something that is loved is never lost.”
― Toni Morrison, Beloved
In observation of Banned Books Week 2023, I decided to treat myself and reread Beloved by my favorite author, Toni Morrison. In 1988, Beloved received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award, the Melcher Book Award, the Lyndhurst Foundation Award, and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award. When the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Toni Morrison in 1993, it was said that her novels were characterized by " visionary force and poetic import” and that she “gives life to an essential aspect of American reality." In 2006, a survey of writers and literary critics compiled by The New York Times ranked Beloved as the best work of American fiction from 1981 to 2006.
Toni Morrison’s Beloved has been the object of challenges in school districts and public library systems across the country. For instance, in 2022, the Protect Nebraska Children Coalition brought an extensive list of books to the Wauneta-Pallisade (NE) Public Schools board meeting and wanted the books removed from both the elementary and high school libraries. This list of more than 30 titles includes Beloved. All books were subsequently removed for evaluation. In 2016, Beloved was challenged but retained as an optional summer reading choice in the Satellite Beach (FL) High School Advanced Placement classes. A parent admitted that he had not read the entire book when he addressed the committee, but wanted the book banned because of what he called “porn content.” In 2013, Beloved was challenged but retained as a text in Salem (MI) High School Advanced Placement English courses. The complainants cited the allegedly obscene nature of some passages in the book and asked that it be removed from the curriculum. District officials determined the novel was appropriate for the age and maturity level of Advanced Placement students. In reviewing the novel, the committee also considered the accuracy of the material, the objectivity of the material, and the necessity of using the material in light of the curriculum.
Scholars say one of the reasons Toni Morrison’s books are controversial is because they address dark moments in American history that can be uncomfortable to talk about for some people. Beloved, for example, was inspired by The Margaret Garner Incident of 1856. Margaret Garner was born into slavery on June 4, 1834, on Maplewood Plantation in Boone County, Kentucky. Working as a house slave for much of her life, Garner often traveled with her masters and even accompanied them on shopping trips to free territories in Cincinnati, Ohio. After marrying Robert Garner in 1849, Margaret bore four children by 1856. At this time, the Underground Railroad was at its height in and around Cincinnati, transporting numerous slaves to freedom in Canada. The Garners decided to take advantage of such an opportunity to escape enslavement. On Sunday January 27, 1856, they set out for their first stop on their route to freedom, Joseph Kite’s house in Cincinnati. The Garners made it safely to Kite’s home on Monday morning, where they awaited their next guide. Within hours, the Garners’ master, A.K. Gaines, and Federal marshals stormed Kite’s home with warrants for the Garners. Determined not to return to slavery, Margaret decided to take the lives of herself and her children. When the marshals found Margaret in a back room, she had slit her two-year-old daughter’s throat with a butcher knife, killing her. The other children lay on the floor wounded but still alive. The Garners were taken into custody and tried in what became one of the longest fugitive slave trials in history. During the two-week trial, abolitionist and lawyer, John Jolliffe, argued that Margaret’s trips to free territory in Cincinnati entitled her and her children to freedom. Although Jolliffe provided compelling arguments, the judge denied the Garners’ plea for freedom and returned them to Gaines. He relocated the Garners to several different plantations before finally selling them to his brother in Arkansas.
Emily Knox, author of Book Banning in 21st-Century America, states of Toni Morrison’s body of work, that: “What she tried to do is convey the trauma of the legacy of slavery to her readers. That is a violent legacy. Her books do not sugarcoat or use euphemisms. And that is actually what people have trouble with.” Dana A. Williams, President of the Toni Morrison Society and Dean of Howard University’s graduate school says: “Toni Morrison’s books tend to be targeted because she is unrelenting in her belief that the very particular experiences of Black people are incredibly universal. Blackness is the center of the universe for her and for her readers, or for her imagined reader. And that is inappropriate or inadequate or unreasonable or unimaginable for some people.”
Toni Morrison often spoke out against censorship, both of her work and more broadly. Her comments in the introduction of Burn This Book, a 2009 anthology of essays she edited on censorship issues, are especially appropriate for today. “The thought that leads me to contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people, outlawed languages flourishing underground, essayists questions challenging authority never being posed, unstaged plays, canceled films—that thought is a nightmare. As though a whole universe is being described in invisible ink.”
In September 2022, as part of New York Public Library’s Banned Books Week celebration, the NYPL honored Toni Morrison. Her words printed below are engraved on one of its walls at its flagship location on 42nd Street.
Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this mission. No committee decides who may enter, no crisis of body or spirit must accompany the entrant. No tuition is charged, no oath sworn, no visa demanded. Of the monuments humans build for themselves, very few say 'touch me, use me, my hush is not indifference, my space is not a barrier.' If I inspire awe, it is because I am in awe of you and the possibilities that dwell in you.
Resources
Toni Morrison on writing 'Beloved' (1987 interview)
Toni Morrison talks to Peter Florence
Toni Morrison on Beloved | Hay Festival
Why should you read Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”? - Yen Pham
"Beloved" - Banned Books Week 2021
Readout: Beloved - Banned Books Week 2020
Banned Books Conversations - Beloved by Toni Morrison

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Walter I. Jenkins III
Honors 101
Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2019
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Beloved by Toni Morrison is a dramatic historical fiction published in 1987 by Vintage Books. Morrison is an award-winning author of such prizes as the Nobel Prize in literature, the Pulitzer Prize, and many more. This novel was written with the purpose of exhibiting not only the horrors of slavery but also the psychological consequences it had on those who became free. Beloved adequately conveys these themes through the perspective of Sethe, a woman who was enslaved for most of her life and who tries desperately to run from her past once she achieves freedom. Reasons for Sethe’s grief include the mysterious death of her baby after whom the book was named as well as the everlasting feeling of repression that her owners instilled in her during her time on the plantation “Sweet Home” in Kentucky. Sethe’s issues also extend into her relationships. Her daughter, Denver, is constantly suspicious of new people who enter her mother’s life and constantly searches to learn more about her family’s history-a history her mother has worked desperately to forget. Sethe’s new lover, Paul D, who was also a slave at Sweet Home is extremely supportive of her strife. However, he cannot get her to forget about her true love Halle, who was separated from her when they left the plantation. Throughout the novel Beloved we as the readers see how Sethe evolves and accepts her past while more fragments of her past are explained.
The significance of the title Beloved is that this word was engraved on Sethe’s dead child’s tombstone. Throughout the book this significance becomes even more relevant. Many themes are present in this novel, though I feel the most important ones are running from the past and inferiority. From the early chapters of the book, it is clear that Sethe has faced some horrible situations including the death of her infant child and her abuse as a slave. The scars on Sethe’s back serve to symbolize the permanent effects that her past in slavery has on her present as a freed woman. The theme of inferiority is displayed many times throughout the book, but the character who faces this the most is Paul D. Paul D grew up with two half-brothers, both of which shared the same name Paul, but with an A and an F.
Two words I would use to describe Beloved are uncomfortable and confusing. Though these words have negative consequences, I believe this was Morrison’s intentions. I felt uncomfortable throughout the novel because of the excessive amounts of rape and because of some of Sethe’s decisions throughout some of the later chapters. Though these are unsettling events in the book, they are also very important to convey the atrocities that slaves were subject to. Of course, I could never imagine what it was truly like to be a slave, but I think Morrison accurately depicted the extreme physical and mental tolls slavery had on its victims. I also found Beloved to be very confusing because of its constant transition between Sethe’s time as a slave on the Sweet Home Plantation in Kentucky and her time as a freed slave in Cincinnati. This is not a criticism but simply encouragement to read the book a second time in order to develop a more thorough understanding. Morrison’s utilization of constant flashbacks served to add a level of suspense to Sethe’s life story.
Beloved is an incredible depiction of life after slavery and the relationships one would make through it. I recommend this novel to people of all ages, but I feel like it is particularly important for white children to read. Slavery is a subject that is prevalent in every African American household even today, including many stories of the horrors their ancestors faced. Though I learned about slavery all through school, I was never able to put myself in the mind of a slave. For someone like me whose family never had to deal with any of it, it was especially mortifying. Beloved can be found on Amazon.com for $12.43 and free shipping with Amazon Prime.

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Stella
Beautifully written as always
Reviewed in Canada on December 12, 2024
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Morrison never fails to write beautiful and haunting stories.

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Winnie
Ótimo
Reviewed in Brazil on September 23, 2024
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Otimo

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Ariadna Salas
Excelente
Reviewed in Mexico on July 5, 2023
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Gran precio, llegó antes de tiempo

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Ashley Raynor
Not your typical ghost story
Reviewed in the Netherlands on January 14, 2025
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3.5 stars
I find it a bit difficult to review this book, because I'm not a native English speaker so some of the American phrases/words I did not completely understand. Some parts of the book were really poetic, which fit the book very well and definitely showed me why Toni Morrison is such a revered writer. Even though I did not understand everything, I do understand why so many people love this book. It covers difficult subjects, but necessary ones to speak/write about.

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MUSKAN SINGH
One of the classics
Reviewed in India on August 14, 2024
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Toni Morrison is no ordinary writer and Beloved is one of her masterpieces. It is a must read for book lovers as it is a blend of history, psychology and fiction. The book delivered to me was of good quality, including the quality of the pages and print. Good job Amazon, keep it up!

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Beloved: Pulitzer Prize Winner Paperback – Unabridged, June 8, 2004

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