Déjenme procesarlo y regreso con la reseña.

Beloved is the Great American Horror Novel. Sorry Stephen King: evil clowns and alcoholic would-be writers are pretty creepy, but they just got nothing on the terrifying specter of American slavery! I literally got chills -- physical chills -- over and over while reading this book. To me, great horror has the scary element (e.g., a ghost) and then, lurking behind it, something so vast and evil that trying to think about it can make you go insane. Beloved did that! It worked as horror! And then also, even more, it worked as great American literature. I don't think in these terms too often, but it does seem like there's such a thing as national novels. I'm sure there's a better, fancier way to talk about what I mean, which is books that are so specifically about "The American Experience" that being an American reading them feels very special and intimate, as if it's a book about my own family. That feels like a strange and dorky thing for me to say, but it's how I felt. Slavery is such an essential part of all our heritage that reading this treatment of it felt very personal, like listening to secrets about your grandparents. Beloved really worked on something at the heart of the American experience, and while I don't usually think in those terms this book forced me to, which is one of many reasons why it did affect me so much.

I feel like Morrison has a certain reputation and associations that are completely at odds with what her work is actually like. Maybe it's the Toni-with-an-i thing; it's definitely the Oprah connection and the fact that she's a lady author, but whatever the reasons, I feel like people who haven't read her believe that Morrison writes these lovely, lyrical, ladylike books that will soften the heart and elevate the soul.... and I mean, I guess in a way she does, but these lovely books will give you seriously deranged nightmares. Toni Morrison is out of her MIND! I mean, she really must be in order to write these things. I can't imagine what it would be like to have this incredibly twisted stuff come out of my brain.... Of course, the most horrific parts of the book aren't invented; Morrison clearly spent a lot of time researching the historical record of slavery and thinking about its effects and meaning, and her ability to wrest a novel like this out of that past is just incomprehensible.... because in fact Beloved really is lovely and lyrical, but it's about the most disturbing shit imaginable. It's interesting to see how divided people on this site are about Morrison. A lot of people just LOATHE her! I think that's pretty understandable when you consider her subject matter. Some girl on here was like, "UGH! Beastiality, rape, torture, infanticide.... Toni Morrison is DISGUSTING!" And I mean, well, that girl's got a point, this book was pretty icky.... but it's about kind of an icky topic, ya know?

In a weird way, this felt a bit like the anti-Proust: it's about memory, but instead of being a plotless, enchanting, European meander through a picturesque past, Beloved is a brutal and ruthless American cousin with rough, bloody hands, running through the woods screaming. The book is about the problem of memory, specifically the memory of trauma, both on a personal and national level. I feel like everyone always wants to write these great books about the most terrible shit, but the fact is that doing so right is incredibly hard, which is maybe why there're so many bad books about tragedy and so many good books about boring people's mundane little problems. You really have to know what you're doing to write about the most terrible shit well, and Morrison picked THE most terrible shit in America's past, then wrote an original and organic ghost story that deserves its hallowed place in American literature.... Ya know, one thing we think about in social work school (or that I thought about, anyway) is the relationship between macro events or phenomena (e.g., a war, or racism) and its micro effects on individuals. This book depicts the effects of slavery on people -- individually and collectively -- with, just, well, shattering genius. But don't try this at home, folks! She is a lady of unusual talent and skills, and in most people's clumsy hands this effort'd be dangerous.

Beloved isn't flawless, and it's not one of my all-time favorite books or anything. However, it is a great classic, and I think everyone who hasn't already should read it.... well, actually, let me amend that. A lot of people on here, as noted, hate this book. If you struggle to follow a slightly nonlinear narrative or are white and feel personally affronted by descriptions of historical wrongs perpetrated by white people on black people, you might chose another book club selection. Everyone else, though, I think should give this a go, especially if you love ghost stories!



P.S. I just had a really fun idea for a literary double date, which would be Cathy from Wuthering Heights with Beloved, and Medea with Sethe. They could all go on the Oprah show together and talk about their traumatic experiences! I would definitely, definitely watch that, and I bet other people would too.

3.5 stars, achingly beautiful, but i might have to read this a few times to fully grasp everything and appreciate it. when i do, i will probably write a full review

Beloved
You are my sister
You are my daughter
You are my face; you are me
I have found you again; you have come back to me
You are my Beloved
You are mine
You are mine
You are mine

-

another one!

Between 3.5-4 stars.

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

This book explores, primarily, the character of Sethe and her violent past and horrifying trauma of her previously enslaved life in Sweet Home, Kentucky. It also explores her past with the death of her baby daughter, with one word etched into the tombstone, Beloved. Beloved is a malevolent spirit and spectre in Sethe's life, who wants revenge but also love from her mother.

This book also explores the life of Sethe's other daughter, Denver. Denver is alive but lives a life of isolation and loneliness in the house with her mother, hardly ever venturing outside the walls of house 124. With her extreme loneliness, Denver is the one character who first tries to seek, love and embrace the spirit of Beloved. While Sethe and Denver are living in their post-enslavement life, a member from Sethe's past life from Sweet Home makes an appearance, and from here her memories of the past enslavement start to catch up with her... memories she would much rather forget.

While some parts of this were extremely lyrical and beautiful; some parts were also rather dense and so the book required some work to read. However, I am so glad I persevered and I was awarded with poetic prose, horror and beauty. This book explored the cruel and vile treatment of slaves, with both Paul D's and Sethe's experiences horrifying.... it's a scary and angering thing to read especially as these experiences are based on truth. This book explored journeys to freedom and the help that was offered along the way. Most importantly this book demonstrates how decisions, thoughts and feelings that are made after being "free" (by running away from Sweet Home) from the prolonged torture and experimentation of being enslaved at Sweet Home, and how this shapes lives.
This book also explored love and being loved, family, as well as regret and anger, especially with reference to Sethe's relationships to those who enter, or live, at House 124.

“There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind--wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.”

n  

“Freeing yourself was one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

n  Toni Morrison’s  Beloved is a melancholic but beautifully written story about Sethe, a slave woman who having escaped slavery will never be free. She is daunted not only by her memories, but also by the ghost of her baby daughter that died nameless. On her grave there is just a word: Beloved. Her suffering is poignant and heartbreaking.
n  

“Sad as it was that she did not know where her children were buried or what they looked like if alive, fact was she knew more about them than she knew about herself, having never had the map to discover what she was like.

Could she sing? (Was it nice to hear when she did?) Was she pretty? Was she a good friend? Could she have been a loving mother? A faithful wife? Have I got a sister and does she favor me? If my mother knew me would she like me?”

n Masterfully written, it is powerful and poetical at the same time. It is considered a great example of American literature, and I can do no less. Despite it all, it was so tragic that it injures the soul: it is enslavement at its worst, for even after escape there is no freedom; it is wretchedness of loss, that torments the living.

And amid all this suffering, there is beauty in Morrison's lyrical delivery:
n  

“There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship's, smooths and contains the rocker. It's an inside kind--wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one's own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.”

nI can say honestly that I cherished Beloved like certainly it deserved, however I was depressingly impacted, and it left me with a very sorrowful taste. As Morrison doubtless felt and foresaw in her readers when writing Beloved. For its theme requires no less.
n  

"Beloved
You are my sister
You are my daughter
You are my face; you are me
I have found you again; you have come back to me
You are my beloved
You are mine
You are mine"

nIf you have not read Beloved, I urge you to do it!

Beloved is a novel about haunting; it is a novel about the human inability to move on from the past and how easily it can resurface. We may try to move on, but it never really leaves us. And when the past is painful and full of blood it echoes for an eternity.

n  “You know as well as I do that people who die bad don’t stay in the ground.”n

Enter Beloved, daughter of Sethe, a girl killed by her mother many years previous to escape the shackles of slavery. Was it murder? Was it mercy? Was it both? I don’t have the answers, though the past never stays dead. The American slave trade can never be forgotten nor should it. Although Beloved is the physical manifestation that is haunting her mother, the reality is somewhat different. It is her past; it is the injustice she faced and a decision she was forced to make that will never leave her. Beloved is just the embodiment of it.

The novel flicks around in time, moving forwards, backwards and then returning the present. Sometimes it’s mid-chapter with no clearly defined shift. A character’s mind will wonder, returning to a time or place which helps to define who they are in the now. Beloved is no light reading. It is a demanding book. The plot shifts around with little explanation, point of views change randomly and quickly. But, again, this is because the past never truly leaves us. We may be in the present, though our history will always haunt us. And here America is being haunted by her dark past.

Tony Morrison’s prose is eloquent and deals directly with psychological trauma. It’s more than physical scars and life wasted in servitude; it’s about what happens after. The shackles may have been removed but each former slave will always feel them on their wrists biting into their skin. They flock together, building new communities out of those who experienced, and are still experiencing, the pain and hell slavery wrought them. They do their best to carry on and make new lives, though racial prejudice still remains. And it will for many more years.

But who are they now?

There is also a sense of closeness, of inexperience. The world is a vast place, but for former slaves, for those born into slavery, it is dauntingly huge. Imagine spending your entire life in one enclosed space, knowing but a small handful of people, and then suddenly having the world made available to you. You don’t know it. You don’t understand it. All you have ever known is forced labour and the slave master’s whip. Where do you go? Where do you belong? Thus, men like Paul D are forced to wonder with no real sense of belonging. They go from town to town, relationship to relationship, without establishing a strong sense of identity or roots.

Pain permeates this narrative. It oozes out of the characters and their sad experiences. Morrison gets to the heart of the matter and she is uncompromising in her honesty. Certainly, not a novel to be missed though I was glad to finish it.

There are reasons why Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. Beloved may be the biggest one. The structure is a ghost story about a woman who killed her own children rather than see them be dragged back from freedom to live a life of slavery, and how the guilt of that act comes back to haunt her. But the real payload here is a portrayal of the slave existence, how it seeps into every pore, affects every emotion, defines one’s world view, how one values education, how willing one can be to love another human being. It is a triumph, a masterwork by one of the world’s great writers, working so well at several levels.


Toni Morrison - image fr0m The New Yorker

Sethe is the main character. Having already sent her children ahead, this pregnant woman flees slavery in the south and takes up residence with her grandmother, Baby Suggs. But when a posse comes to bring her back, she kills her children rather than allow them to become slaves.

There is a lot here about identity, defining oneself in one’s own terms and not the owner’s for example. Also, there is commentary on the need for and value of community. Sethe’s daughter Denver never strays from their home, but when she finally does, she finds that there is help to be had. When Paul D is in need the community of free blacks is more than willing to help.

The story is based on a real case, on in which Margaret Garner (remembered in this book as the family name given to the less horrendous slave owners) in 1856 killed her children for the same reason.

Most men in this book are oppressors, but a few rise above. Mister Garner, although a slave owner, shows at least some signs of humanity. Paul D is the most developed male character, struggling with his fears and weaknesses, but in search of truth and peace.

Morrison utilizes expected literary devices like foreshadowing (an early image of a white-clad figure hovering over Sethe), flipping back and forth among several time lines, changing from third person to first, classic references (p 174 When the four horsemen came—schoolteacher, one nephew, one slave catcher and a sherrif—the hours on Bluestone Road was so quiet they thought they were too late.) to great effect.

More than just a great ghost story or an outstanding tale of slavery, Morrison has written a classic of 20th century American literature. It will be read forever.


=============================EXTRA STUFF

Morrison’s Facebook page - Morrison passed in 2019. The page is maintained by Knopf.

Reviews of other Morrison work
-----2014 - God Help the Child
-----2011 - Home
-----2008 - A Mercy

Read but not reviewed
-----1977 - Song of Solomon
-----1973 - Sula

A truly beautiful, powerful read.

"Freeing yourself was one thing: claiming ownership of that freed self was another."

When I finished reading Beloved last night, I still had a decent chunk of time left during which I would usually start another book, make the most of it. I find it fairly easy to process a book, for however long it asks of me, while continuing to read other things. But I couldn't even consider which one to go on with next, so I left it and used that time to ruminate over what I had just read.

There were no specific thoughts, nothing that lends itself to a review really, I just sat there thinking, while the atmosphere of the book lingered. Some of the clearer thoughts that came to me this morning, after a night of contemplating, were answers to the more obvious questions: Did I agree with what Sethe did? Would I respond in a similar way, were I to somehow find myself in that situation? My answers were rather noncommittal -- I didn't completely agree with what Sethe did, however I felt like I understood why (within the context of the novel) and I know that I could never truly know how I would react in such a situation.

I had been looking forward to reading this for a long time. Toni Morrison's reputation as one of the Great American Novelists proceeds her, and despite this being the first book of hers that I have read, I have watched several interviews with her, and loved her use of language as she spoke -- I had high expectations going into this and they were easily met, then exceeded.

It's interesting to me that though this was a fairly short novel (my copy is 275 pages long) I felt like I spent much longer with it than I actually did. Similar to that feeling when you've spent 1000+ pages with characters and it feels incredibly sad to finally reach the end and have to let them go.

My favourite character was Dever, who I related to quite strongly --- not so much in a literal sense, but there were many elements of her that felt familiar (too familiar at times!) to me.
However, I think the character that affected me the most was Sixo. When I finally got to the dreadful (dreadful in terms of content, not the writing) chapter that described everything in clear detail, I didn't want to read it, but had to, had to know. It's this chapter, and Sixo's part in it, that my mind returns to the most.

What Paul D says to Sethe, and her response to it, in the penultimate chapter of the book was beautiful and powerful in a way I was not prepared for. I kept returning to it, to re-read, to think in over.
n  He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. "You your best thing, Sethe. You are." His holding fingers are holding hers.
"Me? Me?"n
There are other thoughts that come to me, the villainy of Schoolteacher, made all the worse by the normalcy of it. Everything concerning Beloved, how I was fascinated by her, frightened of her, frightened for her. Baby Suggs sadness, which was in many ways the most tragic part of the book. I don't think sadness is a word that best encompasses what she was going through, but it's all I can think of right now. n  "God puzzled her and she was too ashamed of Him to say so."n

I have so many thoughts about this novel. Some I've included here, some I haven't as they don't quite feel fully formed yet. This is a novel I expect to re-read, probably many times if I am lucky enough to have the time, but for now I want to leave it for a while. I'm sure it goes without saying that I will be reading more of Toni Morrison's writing.

You know, sometimes I just don’t get other readers. I can’t relate to their reactions, their expectations, their way of looking at things. Take Beloved, a book that I have only ever part read, having given up about a third of the way into it. Reaction to the book seems to be about evenly split between those who hate it and those who love it. Which is fine, of course. Yet the haters appear to base their antipathy on the subject matter; they, according to the reviews I’ve read, have a problem with someone writing about slavery; they compose their reviews metaphorically throwing their hands around in wild fashion as if to keep this objectionable topic away. It’s as though Morrison was trying to convert them to Catholicism or something. I can’t get my head around it at all. Their argument, as far as I can gather, is that slavery was, y’know, a long time ago and we’re now entirely inclusive and lovely towards all people and so writing about slavery is tantamount to trying to make us [by which I mean white people] feel guilty for something that 1. we didn’t ourselves do and 2. we can’t control i.e. the colour of our skin. Honestly, go look around the web [including this site]; I’m not making this shit up.

What do you say to ignorant crap like that? Part of me would prefer to say nothing because I find it exhausting arguing against such obvious idiocy. But if I was forced to respond I might well state, first of all, that, uh, racism does actually still exist. And so the subject is, er, not entirely irrelevant. Secondly, even if it didn’t exist in our society, even if we were all living in multi-cultural hippy communes, what exactly would be wrong with someone writing about slavery and persecution? I might be wrong of course [I’m not], but I’m pretty sure Morrison didn’t put the necessary effort and time into writing a book just to make some twat in Milton Keynes feel guilty. If you ask me, I’d guess that it may be that, as a black woman, as a human being, she would be interested in exploring and understanding such a pivotal and lamentable part of [her/our] history.

For me, the point of writing a book like Beloved is to elevate a terrible part of history beyond mere statistics. Like with the holocaust, it’s easy sometimes to get lost in numbers, to forget that individual people were affected or perished. Beloved personalises slavery, which makes it easier for people-in-general to identify with the subject. I would say that is very important. As far as I’m concerned, we should not be allowed to forget, to push these things under the carpet. You cannot live in a vacuum, where history is meaningless except for passing exams and making a HBO mini-series. This stuff is part of who you are and continues to play a role in how the world, your world, works. And, yeah, I know what people say, which is that there are plenty of tragedies not given the same status, or attention; these people ask, why aren’t we talking about what happened in Bosnia, Serbia, Nigeria, etc? My response: stop whinging and write a book about those places/conflicts/tragedies, then.

However, I did, of course, quit Beloved without finishing it, although my doing so, my quitting, obviously had nothing to do with white guilt; my issues with the novel aren’t political ones, but, rather, they are bookish ones. I didn’t feel as though Toni Morrison was preaching at me, but I did feel as though the book was too heavy-handed and overwrought, and even cringingly trite and saccharine. In fact, the thing struck me as something like what Faulkner might have produced had you plied him full of E and asked him to write a chick-lit novel.

Just consider this line:

"Jump, if you want to, ‘cause I’ll catch you, girl. I’ll catch you ‘fore you fall."

And this:

"He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. ‘You your best thing, Sethe. You are.’ His holding fingers are holding hers."

The most polite thing I can say about those two quotes is that neither strike me as good writing.

What about this:

"In this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Yonder they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands! Love them. Raise them up and kiss them. Touch others with them, pat them together, stroke them on your face ’cause they don’t love that either. You got to love it, you! And no, they ain’t in love with your mouth. Yonder, out there, they will see it broken and break it again. What you say out of it they will not heed. What you scream from it they do not hear. What you put into it to nourish your body they will snatch away and give you leavins instead. No, they don’t love your mouth. You got to love it. This is flesh I’m talking about here. Flesh that needs to be loved."

I mean….dear God. And the thing is, I totally agree with the sentiment of almost everything in the above passage; it’s the presentation of that sentiment that bothers me.

Every sentence in Beloved aches [or creaks] with emotion, with meaning and significance; and, for me, the impact of the story, and the full horror of the subject that Morrison was dealing with, was compromised by that. Cards on the table, I found the book entirely ridiculous. Throughout my reading, I wanted on almost every page to tell her: tone it down, and let the story breathe a bit; I wanted to chide her: you’re trying too hard. I felt as though some of her choices weren’t made in order to serve the story, but because she was trying to impress. Ironically, for someone who, I think I am correct in saying, teaches or taught English literature or creative writing, I would say that she needed advice and guidance herself. Someone needed to look at the manuscript and take a red pen to it, with little notes in the margin saying 'is this necessary?'

What is strange about Beloved is that it is both saccharine and brutal. There’s a weird tension between the florid style, the sentimentality, and the subject matter and some of the content; it is a book that screams excess; everything is taken just a bit too far; Morrison displays a distinct inability to rein in it, and a lack of subtlety and control. So, one minute we’re getting told about how breast milk was forcibly harvested from Sethe, the next she and Paul D are sharing a tender moment, as he feels up the scars on her back and rambles on poetically-symbolically about a tree.

Probably the most glaring misstep in the novel occurs long after I gave up on it. Struggling badly to overcome my reservations about the quality of what I was reading, I had a look at some online reviews. It was then that I came across the opinions outlined in my initial paragraphs, but it was also then that I found out that the baby – the ghost baby, the slaughtered baby – at some point in the novel is apparently heard in the text; by which I mean that we have access to its thoughts or words. And, I, ah, I dunno about you, but that just seems ludicrous to me; it’s almost akin to gross incompetence or mishandling of your material. Why on earth would you do that? The fate of that child speaks loudly enough, all Toni Morrison is doing by giving it a voice [a stream of consciousness voice, I believe] is cranking up the melodrama to 1000. And I had a thought upon that discovery, a thought that ran: I’m not reading all this to get there.

(Book 223 from 1001 books) - Beloved, Toni Morrison

Beloved is a 1987 novel by the American writer Toni Morrison.

Set after the American Civil War (1861–65), it is inspired by the story of an African-American slave, Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery in Kentucky late January 1856 by fleeing to Ohio, a free state. Morrison had come across the story "A Visit to the Slave Mother who Killed Her Child" in an 1856 newspaper article published in the American Baptist and reproduced in The Black Book, a miscellaneous compilation of black history and culture that Morrison edited in 1974.

عنوانهای چاپ شده در ایران: «دلبند»؛ «محبوب»؛ «دخترم بیلاود»؛ نویسنده تونی موریسون (روشنگران و چشمه) ادبیات؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز پنجم ماه آگوست سال2011میلادی

عنوان: دخ‍ت‍رم‌ ب‍ی‍لاود؛ نویسنده: ت‍ون‍ی‌ م‍وری‍س‍ن‌ (موریسون)؛ مت‍رج‍م گ‍ل‍رخ‌ س‍ع‍ی‍دن‍ی‍ا؛ ت‍ه‍ران ن‍ش‍ر م‍رغ‌ آم‍ی‍ن‌‏‫، سال1373؛ در315ص؛ شابک9645519136؛ موضوع داستان‌های نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده29م

عنوان: م‍ح‍ب‍وب‌؛ ت‍ون‍ی‌ م‍اری‍س‍ون‌؛ مت‍رج‍م س‍ان‍از ص‍ح‍ت‍ی‌؛ تهران، دادار، سال1381؛ در335ص؛ شابک9647294905؛

عنوان: دلبند؛ نویسنده: تونی موریسون؛ مترجم: شیرین‌دخت دقیقیان؛ تهران، روشنگران و چشمه؛ سال1373؛ در405ص؛ چاپ دوم سال1377؛ شابک9646194893؛ چاپ سوم سال1388؛ چاپ چهارم سال1390؛ چاپ پنجم سال1394؛ در405ص؛ شابک978964362579؛ چاپ ششم سال1397؛

کتاب را خانمها «شیریندخت دقیقیان» با عنوان «دلبند»؛ و «گلرخ سعیدنیا»؛ با عنوان «دخترم بیلاود» و «ساناز صحتی» با عنوان «محبوب»، و «مرجان مثنوی» با عنوان «دلبند» ترجمه کرده اند؛

تونی موریسون نخستین زن سیاهپوست بودند، که برای «دلبند» جایزه نوبل ادبیات دریافت کردند؛ در سال1998میلادی فیلم این رمان، به کارگردانی «جاناتان دیم» و تهیه کنندگی و بازی «اپرا وینفری» ساخته شد

داستان به دوران سیاه بردگی، و زندگی بردگان سیاهپوست میپردازد؛ داستان دردناک یک برده ی زن و سیاهپوست، به نام «ست»، که دختر خود را میکشد، تا او را از وحشت زندگی در بردگی، در امان دارد؛ داستان «ست»، زندگی حقیقی برده ای به نام «مارگارت گارنر» است، که در سال1856میلادی، از دست صاحبش در «کنتاکی»، به امید یافتن پناهگاهی در «سین سیناتی»، فرار میکند؛ اما درست هنگامی که صاحبانش او را دستگیر میکنند، امید خویش را از دست میدهد، و یکی از دخترانش را میکشد؛ «موریسون» بسیار زیبا این داستان واقعی را، با پیش زمینه ی برده داری بسط داده؛ تا به دوران فراموش‌ شده‌ ی بردگی، و برده‌ داری و لزوم ترحم به بردگان سیاهپوست بپردازد؛ پیوستگی میان شخصیت‌های زن، و چند‌لایه بودن در روابط میان آن‌ها، باعث جذابیت‌های احساسی ویژه ای شده‌ است، به عناصر اجتماعی، روانشناسی و فلسفی زندگی انسانی نیز می‌پردازد؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 09/10/1394هجری خورشیدی؛ 22/10/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی

5★
“Anybody Baby Suggs knew, let alone loved, who hadn’t run off or been hanged, got rented out, loaned out, bought up, brought back, stored up, mortgaged, won, stolen or seized. So Baby’s eight children had six fathers. What she called the nastiness of life was the shock she received upon learning that nobody stopped playing checkers just because the pieces included her children.”

Her children, like Baby Suggs, were slaves. Black people who were just part of the livestock on properties in the American South. Baby Suggs is only one of the characters in this heavily populated book, but she’s central to the theme. She is the mother-in-law of Sethe, the main character.

The setting is near Cincinnati, Ohio, but the story moves back and forth, carefully giving us bits and pieces about the background and the relationships. And the horror. It is a terrifying read, because Morrison doesn’t shy away from painting images that I won’t be able to forget. This was written in 1987, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, and Morrison won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. No wonder.

The one thing that helped me get through this is that I’ve read a number of books about the subject, which I am sure were influenced by Morrison’s work and/or her research. The appalling things owners and slave catchers did to slaves would put perpetrators in jail now if they did it to animals. It’s like reading about medieval torture, except it’s only a few generations ago.

But there is warmth and love and even celebration. The sharing of food, the sense of community – these parts are wonderful, making the violence and desperation that much worse by contrast.

Nothing is told in a completely straightforward way. We often have to figure out what exactly is going on and why. I understand the worst parts of Sethe’s story, where she’d rather kill her children than let the slave catcher take them, are based on a true story.

She works in a restaurant kitchen and tries to take each day as it comes, setting the horror aside.

“Working dough. Working, working dough. Nothing better than that to start the day’s serious work of beating back the past.”

Sethe and her daughter, Denver, are living with Baby Suggs and a ghost. The ghost moves things, throws things, and while we begin to suspect what or who it is, it’s not until Paul D arrives from the same Sweet Home farm Sethe escaped from that he gets rid of the ghost. Sethe is pleased to see him.

“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.”

Denver, on the other hand, doesn’t like her mother’s attention drawn away from her. She should be her mother’s focus, not some stranger.

“‘How come everybody run off from Sweet Home can’t stop talking about it? Look like if it was so sweet you would have stayed.’

‘Girl, who you talking to?’ Paul D laughed. ‘True, true. She’s right, Sethe. It wasn’t sweet and it sure wasn’t home.’ He shook his head.

‘But it’s where we were,’ said Sethe. ‘All together. Comes back whether we want it to or not.’ She shivered a little.”

With Paul D, Sethe doesn’t have to explain anything. He is careful with what he says to her or not and has his own way of burying things.

“Saying more might push them both to a place they couldn’t get back from. He would keep the rest where it belonged: in that tobacco tin buried in his chest where a red heart used to be. Its lid rusted shut.”

Then the story takes another turn.

“A fully dressed woman walked out of the water.”

She says her name is Beloved, the name that is on the gravestone where Sethe’s baby daughter was buried.

An amazing, heart-wrenching book. As I said, no wonder the author won the Pulitzer and the Nobel.
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You can read a free short story of hers, Sweetness, at The New Yorker online. https://www.newyorker.com/books/doubl...

I reviewed that one with some more links about it here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...