On January 24th of 1988 the New York Times published an article titled BLACK WRITERS IN PRAISE OF TONI MORRISON. This article contains a letter, authored by June Jordan & Houston A. Baker, and signed by 48 Black authors and critics in total, speaking to the undeniable merits of Toni Morrison's five novels (at the time).

This letter was published 54 days after the passing James Baldwin. The man often seated next to Toni Morrison when we talk about the best to ever pick up a pen.

James Baldwin passed away without receiving any of the highest literary awards in American letters, such as the National Book Award, The National Books Critics Circle Award, or the Pulitzer Prize. The Black literati of the time came together & took a stand & when the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction was awarded in 1988 it went to Toni Morrison's Beloved.

John Edgar Wideman stated that this letter wasn't written to sway the Pulitzer judges in any way, but many readers will tell you that no swaying was required as Beloved is frequently recognized as one of the best novels ever written.

It is recognized as such, because it is true. Toni Morrison, who dedicated her 5th novel to "Sixty Million and More," writes the beautiful sentences that Black people deserve. Over and over and over again. She does so because We can only rely on Ourselves to write beautiful sentences about Ourselves. If We hold our breath waiting for 324 pages of beautiful sentences to be written by outsiders then they will watch us die. 60 million times over.

Through the likes of Sethe, Denver, Baby Suggs, Paul D, Halle, Sixo, Stamp Paid and more Toni Morrison shows us Love. How to give it. How to receive it. How We can be made to feel We do not deserve it.

Through the likes of Sethe, Denver, Baby Suggs, Paul D, Halle, Sixo and more Toni Morrison shows us how they attempted to make us less than human, how they wanted Our human traits on the left and Our animal traits on the right, but how Our Fully Human spirit could never be destroyed by wannabe definers.

With Beloved Toni Morrison illustrates, through beautiful sentences We deseve, that We are our best thing.

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This is my 1980s entry into the #10Books10Decades Challenge. Attaching a link so you can consider participating as well: https://www.instagram.com/p/CJnNxP5gRME/

Here are a couple of articles I think you'll enjoy:

1. The piece where the Black Literati came together for Toni Morrison: https://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/24/bo...

2. A piece on Margaret Garner who is the inspiration for Sethe's characterization in Beloved: http://library.cincymuseum.org/aag/bi...

Rereads werden nun des Öfteren folgen. Der zweite Durchgang dieses Buches hat so richtig bei mir eingeschlagen.
Da ich nun sprachlich und stilistisch vollumfänglich etwas mit dem Buch anfangen konnte, war ich in der Lage deutlich fokussierter mit dem Inhalt umzugehen. Und siehe da, ich habe doch tatsächlich etliche biblische Parallelen aus dem alten Testament finden können. Wen wundert es, wenn Morrison selber doch ihrem Buch Römer 9:25 voran stellt. Nur, dass wir Gott vergeblich im Buch suchen können. Er ist diese ominöse Leerstelle, von denen es viele im Buch gibt. Lücken die der Leser füllen darf, mit Symbolik an der Hand, um die Übergänge zur unerreichbaren harten Realität erträglich, händelbar zu machen. Morrison verhandelt den Schmerz, in seinen herrlichsten Abgründen, mit einer Sinnlichkeit, das einem Hören und Sehen vergeht. Wir riechen, fühlen, sehen, assoziieren, sind empfänglich für jeglichen Reiz der an "spitzenbesetzen Bäumen baumeln" mag. Jetzt sind wir bereit den Überwurf der uns vor dem Realen schützt hinfortzuziehen und blicken in die unergründliche Abscheulichkeit des Menschengeschlechts. Oder aber, wir bedienen uns der Lücken und Leerstellen, klammern uns an blühenden Bäumen und lustigen Farbenspielen fest, säuseln: "nur weniger Schmerz, das wär doch was" und beenden ein gutes Buch in vornehmer Distanziertheit.
Ich empfehle die Radikalkur! Eventuell werden wir mit ein wenig Solidarität belohnt :-)


Aussagen des ersten Durchgangs Mai 2022:
Mein lieber Schwan. Das war anspruchsvoll. So einen Stil hab ich noch nie gelesen. Unaussprechliches Leid, Grausamkeiten und völliger Beraubung vom Mensch sein. Selbst der Hahn auf dem Mist besitzt mehr Würde und Identität als unsere Protagonisten.
Toni Morrison hat eine blumige, mystische Sprache gewählt und bedient sich massenweise diverser Bilder. Natur, Blumen, Bäume und Farben spielen eine wichtige Rolle. Pathos kommt nicht vor. Grotesk verzerrt wirken viele Szenen, da sie wie entrückt die Gräuel schildert und den Protagonisten nur wenig Emotionalität gestattet. Gebrochene Menschen, die in Vergangenem festhängen und keinen Platz in „dem da draußen“ finden. Dazu kommt eine Metaphysische Komponente, die sehr gut gewählt ist um die Zerrissenheit und die emotionalen in sich eingeschlossenen Kämpfe zu unterstreichen.
An sich alles 5 Sterne wert, wäre da nicht mein persönliches Geschmäckle:
Der Erzählstil zu verwirrend. Insbesondere in der ersten Hälfte wusste oft nicht wo wir gerade sind und was sie mir erzählen möchte. Musste häufig Passagen mehrmals lesen. Das hat für keinen schönen Lesefluss gesorgt und ließ mich leicht entnervt zurück. Die Bilder, metaphorischen Ausführungen und nebulösen Beschreibungen: zu viel!

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"n

It's 6 o'clock in the morning and I have finished with one of the best books I have ever read in the course of my short life.
I am sleepless and I need a moment to organize my thoughts, sort out my feelings. Come back to real life. But I can't.

A part of me is still with Sethe and her daughters, Denver and Beloved at 124. A part of me is being tied to a pole and whipped mercilessly for eating a shoat I skinned, butchered and cooked myself. A part of me is giving birth to children of fathers who forced themselves on me. A part of me is still wondering whether my husband Halle is out there alive and free or long dead. A part of me is burying the daughter I killed with a handsaw because I couldn't live to see her being pushed into the endless abyss of torture and humiliation that I had to endure myself. A part of me is engraving the word 'Beloved' on the headstone of my dead girl, because she has no name.
But it is not I. It is Sethe and Sethe is not I.

I'm not even Baby Suggs (Sethe's mother-in-law) who never had a chance to recognize that she was a human being with a beating heart. Baby Suggs, who only looked at her own hands at the sunset of life and came to the realization that they were her own. Her very own for her own use and not the use of another. Baby Suggs, who was forced to accept the "kindness" of being bought out of slave labour by her own son, at the cost of never seeing him again, never knowing what happened to him.

I'm not Paul D, being made to wear neck braces as punishment for an act of belligerence, unable to move his head. Deeply afraid of starting a new life and adding a purpose to it-not knowing what to do with the new-found freedom after the Civil War. Afraid of loving too much and losing too much because of it.

I'm just a lucky Indian girl who was born in an era free from the worst form of human rights violation that ever existed on the planet. I was not alive during the period of systematic brutalization of one particular race by another just because one proclaimed racial superiority over the other.
I was not in the plantations of Kentucky or Georgia or the Carolinas before or after the Civil War. I wasn't in the hell called 'Sweet Home'.
But Sethe was. So were Halle, Paul D, Sixo, Paul A and Baby Suggs and the unnamed ones. And a part of me is with them and I still cannot wrest it away.

I can perhaps ramble on and on and still be completely unable to write a proper review of 'Beloved'. And I won't even try to summarize the book in a few sentences, since that would be deeply irreverent of me.

Beloved is not just a masterpiece, not even just a remarkable literary achievement.
Beloved is the beauty of the resilience of the human spirit.
Beloved is about hope and endurance.
Beloved tells us about unspeakable cruelty and abuse inflicted on humanity by humanity itself.
Beloved reveals festering psychological wounds, deep emotional scars that could never ever heal.
Beloved is profoundly lyrical and empathetic in its depiction of grotesque events that unfolded during the most ignominious part of America's history.
Beloved wrenches your heart out, shreds it into a million tiny pieces but then stitches all the pieces together and hands your heart back to you - all bloodied and messed up.

Maybe a few years down the line when I read Beloved again, I will write a more coherent review and sound less emotional. Maybe I will get every cryptic message Toni Morrison intended for her reader to receive and decode. Maybe I will not. But I will try.
And I will read this book again when I feel like my life is difficult or I can't go on anymore. I'm sure Sethe and Beloved will be there to hold my hands and lead me forward.

I cannot write anymore. I must go and find myself another tissue.

P.S.:- Apologies for the spoilers I have ended up including in the review. But I just had to write this the way I did.

The clear blue sky above, the richness of life around, stretching from the vivid colors in the nature to the exquisiteness that material life offers. The soft milky ambrosia not once maligned by the sweat of forced labor, the promise of a day to mull over existence for the mind is not strained with the thought of an empty stomach. Granted free thought. The assurance of a smile on your kid’s face for he has never known deprivation or fear. The assurance of a smile on your face for you have always been able to look after him. Disassociation is not even a distant possibility. No ghosts looming in the backyard or playing with your mind for no beloved ever died an unnatural death. This is your world. But did there ever exist different worlds in this world; a world different from ours? One waking up everyday to a beautiful blue dawn and other where the night never seemed to disappear, a world denied to its living, where to realize one’s heart beat was a luxury unaffordable, a world with no colors save that of a grey or earth-brown so that when red came, it turned it upside down?

‘Beloved’ existed in that world. An existence hanging between the living and the dead, furious to take a revenge for the life it could be, forbidding her people to forget the vicious past and prohibiting them from coming to terms with freedom. For the milk she was deprived of, she thought it befitting to suck life out of her mother. Beloved. Her mother’s daughter, whose life was taken by her mother because she couldn’t see her die. Since she was given red, she wanted to be called red.

Beloved; a poignant prose with so many layers that it is difficult to address it in few hundred words, an account of forced slavery and its repercussions, blind love of a mother and unspoken ties, female sensitivities and words unuttered, beliefs and disbeliefs, complete resignation and utter shock. Beloved is this and more.

It is a bewildering chronicle of distraught slaves under the strain of Fugitive Slave Law pre Civil War and the horror of Middle Passage (1), the “Unspeakable things Unspoken”(2) according to Toni Morrison. It is a sad tale based upon a true story of one Margaret Garner, who killed her own daughter rather than let her grow up to be a slave. It is a portrayal of horrid human hunger for emotions and their affirmation. It is an account of need of freedom not only from the external bondage but also from the self trapped somewhere in the past. It is a saga of a child deprived of her first recognition, in form of a relation with her mother, as a human and a living entity.


Toni Morrison wove magical realism through this work where years as well as characters permeated the boundaries of time and progression only resulted in diminishing the limits further. While her prose reminded of One Hundred years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, in this passage her writing seemed akin to Beckett’s in The Unnameable, seeping through present, past and future and loosing a sense of consciousness:

She played with me and always came to be with me whenever I needed her. She's mine, Beloved. She's mine. leaves she puts them in a round basket the leaves are not for her she fills the basket she opens the grass I would help her but the clouds are in the way how can I say things that are pictures I am not separate from her there is no place where I stop her face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking at it too a hot thing All of it is now it is always now there will never be a time when I am not crouching and watching others who are crouching too I am always crouching the man on my face is dead his face is not mine his mouth smells sweet but his eyes are locked some who eat nasty themselves I do not eat the men without skin bring us their morning water to drink we have none at night I cannot see the dead man on my face daylight comes through the cracks and I can see his locked eyes I am not big small rats do not wait for us to sleep someone is thrashing but there is no……..

A consciousness forced upon by decades of slavery, mistrust, fear and psychological tussle with one’s self, so that loosing it seemed a way to freedom. Consciousness Sethe resigned from, so as to snatch freedom for her beloved; a freedom from being a slave, a freedom by murder.

Beloved, whose infant self is denied her mother’s proximity, when back, always starves for her love, her presence and her attention. Ravenous and never satisfied, she feeds on Sethe’s self, growing herself larger and larger while her mother becomes smaller and smaller. Denver, Sethe’s other daughter, who once welcomed Beloved in the house for she too needed some form of emotional recognition in society, manages to come out of her sister’s spell and seeks help. Paul D, shattered by the disturbing presence of Beloved and unable to make a place in the family, finally leaves the house. 124 full of Baby Venom. It is only when Denver seeks help from the clan and people come forward, that Beloved leaves the place and disappears from their life.


But Beloved not only stands for a lost hungry child craving for love. She signifies the blood of all those slaves who died in the Middle Passage or perhaps were murdered. The blood’s color is red. In her persuasion to Paul D to call her Red, she is forcing Paul D to remember the past and all the murders. Her ghost, which represent the trapped inner self of slaves, comes back to dampen their spirit even when freed. The trapped self; who is too overwhelmed to appreciate freedom, is unable to shake off the horror of past and wants to live in denial of its freedom. But in making her go away, Morrison seems to be giving a very powerful message indeed. The message that it is possible to come out of the ghosts of a terrible past; that it is possible to claim freedom and ownership when one becomes a part of social environment which recognizes and affirms its presence. In this message, Morrison seems to keep in mind the native African traditional beliefs of healing collectively which Baby Suggs was shown to practice too in the clearing.

Deep reverence for this tribute by Toni Morrison for those “Sixty million / and more” who have remained largely "disremembered and unaccounted for".


-----------------------------------
1. W.E.B. DuBois in The Suppression of the African Slave-Trade to the United States of America, 1638-1870, states that "from 1680 to 1688, 249
ships sailed to Africa, importing 60,783 Negro slaves, after losing 14,387 on the middle passage delivered 47,396 in America.Historically known as the Middle Passage, the slave trade spanned the expansion of Europe from the sixteenth century, culminating in America in the late nineteenth century. The slave trade effected the
death, deracination, and abduction of millions of Africans who, boarded like cattle on numerous slavers, were sold at various ports of call.

2. From Toni Morrison's "Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature," Michigan Quarterly Review, 28, No. 1 (1989), 1-34 where she speaks about two "unspeakable things unspoken" in the bulk of American literature and hitherto marginalized in American history: the horror of the Middle Passage and the horror of slavery as portrayed in Beloved.

not "a" novel. THE novel.

I re-read this book recently a decade after my last read. I was worried that it wouldn't hold up for me as the best book ever written. I was wrong. It's better than I remembered.

This book cracked my head open when I first read it. I had never read anything like it and did not even know it was possible to craft such a poetic story. I kept reading and re-reading and then reading everything else Morrison has written. I just finished her book of essays about the craft so I thought it was time to read it again.

I am not going to describe the book or the story because this book is not about the story. It's about the rhythm of the language, about shifting perspectives, and about history. (The parts about her milk really stood out to me this time because I just finished reading a history book about how slavemasters sold off the breastmilk of their slaves.) I am not going to recommend that everyone read this book because I don't think it's for everyone. My heart breaks when I hear about people who hated it or didn't like it. But this is the book that made me a reader and I will continue to sing its praises

5+ stars - Winner of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Toni Morrison’s masterfully written, ‘Beloved’ is set in 1873, Ohio. Three women are living in the house on Bluestone Road in house number 124, Baby Suggs, her daughter-in-law, Sethe, and Sethe’s daughter, Denver. There’s a fourth presence as well, the ghost of Sethe’s dead baby girl; etched in the child’s headstone is the word ‘Beloved.’ Acting like a frustrated toddler, the ghost knocks over this and that, and even throws the dog, Here Boy, up against the wall, breaking two of his legs and dislocating his eye. Sethe’s two sons, Howard and Buglar leave, chased off by the ghost, or by some other unnamable treachery in the house. Soon after the boys leave, Baby Suggs dies, but not before contemplating colors, blue, yellow, and others, but she never makes it to red.

This is a beautifully written story about slavery, its consequences, the aftermath of the bloody tornado of mind, soul, and body, the cost that is levied against its victims. There’s a pervasive sense of sadness and grief throughout the novel. There’s sorrow in the palpable presence of the ghost, ‘Beloved,’ but Morrison also reveals it in Paul D’s trembling as he’s lowered in a box into the ground, in Baby Suggs recounting of eight children all sold away from her, except for one, and Sethe’s rememory of the horrific events that occur as she is running away from Sweet Home in Kentucky. Morrison unpacks layer after layer of sorrow and grief as the main characters look back upon their years in slavery and its heavy impact then, and now, making its bed in their present, trying to steal their futures. The main catalyst for Sethe’s rememory of the last events to occur at Sweet Home, is the arrival of Paul D, the last of the men to have lived at Sweet Home with Baby Suggs and Sethe. Sethe has long suspected her husband, Halle, to be dead. No-one ever saw him again after the night Sethe ran away.

At times, the narrative is a bit hard to follow as the timeline is a bit fluid, especially at first. Patience is rewarded; all things will become clear as the story progresses. Tension escalates as I become sure the story is going to no good place. Morrison’s storytelling voice is best left to carry you forward without trying to figure out too much, until later, when you’ll want to back up and reread some passages, being sure you know exactly how you got there. Her imagery is vivid, a scar on someone’s back that looks like a tree, “A chokecherry tree. See, here’s the trunk--it’s red and split wide open, full of sap, and this here’s the parting for the branches,” how Paul D feels walking into Sethe’s house, “As soon as he stepped through the red light he knew that, compared to 124, the rest of the world was bald,” and these words as Sethe climbs out of a canoe after birthing Denver, regarding bluefern growing along the river, “Often they are mistook for insects--but they are seeds in which the whole generation sleeps confident of a future.” Morrison's themes revolve around loss, grief, and the traumatic experiences of slavery but there are words of hope, colors in the sky, plants on the windowsills, preaching in the woods, and a tight-knit community of women supporters once Denver asks for help.

‘Beloved,’ is my first book by Morrison, but it won’t be my last. Sometimes the narrative feels like a dreamscape; I believe this is intentional because things can be said and done in dreams that bring long-awaited recognition to daytime struggles. A beautiful gift to American literature, this novel gives voice to the voiceless. This is not only a book that carries a weighty and important message but does so in its characters’ pitch-perfect words, the voices of African Americans, the voice of Toni Morrison. Highly Recommended!

Criança Número 3


124 não é uma casa normal!
124 não é um número qualquer!

124 é um código:

--- 1 e 2 são Howard e Buglar -- os primogénitos de Sethe

--- 4 corresponde a Denver -- a miúda mais nova.

--- o 3 inexistente simboliza a ausência da primeira filha, que já não se encontra entre os vivos. Porém, também ela reside na dita casa, embora num estado não visível aos demais.

Como já certamente inferiram, 124 é uma casa de família algo peculiar e insólita, pois um dos filhos -- Beloved -- só se manifesta em espírito, e até já espantou os dois irmãos machos, com as suas diabruras. Restam então Sethe e Denver, dado que Howard e Buglar já se puseram a cavar…

Beloved está a vingar-se duma morte prematura -- a vida fora-lhe roubada antes dos 2 anos, pela própria mãe, Sethe, que nascera escrava mas almejara morrer livre arriscando uma fuga gorada. Assim, pouco antes de ser recapturada, cortou a garganta da sua Beloved, tencionando aplicar semelhante receita aos restantes filhos; em seguida era suposto suicidar-se, abraçando a morte como única via de libertação. Porém, o tempo não lhe deu para tanto!...

A Sethe de que vos falo, é um misto de ficção e realidade. Foi inspirada na afro-americana Margaret Garner, e Beloved é a sua biografia ficcionada.
Quando penso no seu ato co-criado pelo desespero, sou incapaz dum veredicto.
Alguém disse um dia, sabiamente, que "são os pecados que nos punem", e eu permito-me acrescentar, não menos sabiamente

Damn the humans, they are the most enigmatic beings who ever lived, their hearts have reasons that reason knows not, and their heads fabricate worlds the world have never seen, they kill the things they love and are haunted by the memories that fade away by the time but never disappear, but becomes a ghost and gnaws at your nerves, for always and forever….
To be a mother is the most consummate feeling one can have, the one most celestial and earthly alike, you share your blood and flesh with the one who resides in your womb ignorant of the outer world, the bloody walls and thumping heart his only world, a seed size of a grain gradually becomes something you come to love unconditionally, who feeds on your flesh and sucks your milk, to be a mother is almost godly!
Then there is a world different than ours, a world of less-humans who are bought and sold like corn, where, to live is a curse and to die a luxury, where you are never sure to get bread enough to calm the hunger, where you are never free enough to entertain your eyes with sight of sky, where you are aware of only one color, the color of dirt and hint of sweat, and where you are not named but numbered!
sethe don’t want this world for her children, she ran past the world and stepped into another world, our world, the world of soulless meats, of suspicious beasts, where to love unconditionally is seen beyond question and buffoonery, and where people are stuffed enough bodily to ponder the starvation of soul…if they have one!
She kills the baby girl and will be haunted by her ghost, the baby denied to suck milk, will suck life out of her mother, the baby denied of the warmth of lap, will haunt the home her mother lives, the baby denied to breathe life, will turn the lives of others into living hell….she is beloved and she denies to die!
Morrison is at her best in building most complicated of characters stucked in bizarre tapestry of relations, magical realism is handled craftily, one wayward step and you lose thread of the story wholly, Beloved becomes more than just a repressed memory, but also a representation for the entire community. “A wounded, enraged baby is the central figure of the book, both literally, in the character of Beloved, and symbolically, as it struggles beneath the surface of the other major characters.
All of Morrison’s characters struggle with the psychological repression of their pasts. While much of their pain stems from the horrors of slavery, it is also comes from their relationship with Sethe. Throughout the novel, Sethe suffers more psychological damage than any other character, making it logical that others would find themselves entangled in her life.
As a character, Beloved represents not only her own history as being one who, before her murder, lived along the edge of the line between freedom and slavery, but the history of several generations as she acts out the pain of others by forcing along their remembrances…..as Morrison says:
“Anything dead coming back to life hurts."

Hubo una época en la que el color de tu piel te permitia apropiarte de otra persona,explotarla, someterla a cualquier barbarie, incluso, matarla en cualquier momento. Así, 60.000.000 o más de personas fueron olvidadas, desaparecieron y nunca fueron reclamadas solo por el color de su piel.
Algunas lo soportaron, otras huyeron y hubo quien se revelo por sus hijos para que no les ocurriera lo mismo. Esta última, es la historia del 124.
Esta no es una historia para transmitir.

What an amazing book!

Slavery is one of those topics that you think you know something about until you read a book like this, which addresses it without pity or scandal or feeling sorry for itself.

This approach makes the book incredible for telling it the way it is with no reproach, no condemnation, no hatred for white people, the Klu Klux Klan, or anything else.

Read any other book on slavery and you’ll get recriminations in droves for every ounce of unacceptable treatment as though the writer wants to be acknowledged for what went on in the past. To be reimbursed for their inherited suffering.

My hat goes off to Toni Morrison for helping me understand the horrificness of slavery by writing about it in a natural and unconfined way.

She lets you into the lives of the characters and their relationships and rarely gets haughty or bitter because of how unfairly they are treated. It’s an incredible job of unbiased literature when she had everything to be biased about.

Some of the writing style is rambling, incoherent and almost surreal in places like in a dreamworld or distant planet. Yet somehow direct and vivid.

This book was published in 1987, two years after Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy in 1985. The bleak and marauding writing style is eerily similar and you could be forgiven for penciling Beloved into the horror genre in a few places. It’s certainly brutal.

But it’s also friendly and loving and full of atonement and forgiveness and other emotions that we are capable of feeling under sustained stress and duress.

I loved this book for the picture it paints of something I knew little about: man’s atrocity against fellow man. Now I know more...

This is thoroughly recommended and makes me want to explore other works by Toni Morrison.

If you ever went "parking" as a teenager, especially in a marsh where you thought you were alone until the cops shouted through loudspeakers "Ok folks the party's over. Go home" and a dozen car engines sounded and headlights went on, you know what it's like to want privacy.

What Morrison does is remind us that slaves, too, were teenagers once. They sought each others' bodies. And weren't always unobserved when they found them. I won't spoil the scene by saying more here.

From the reviews I've read, the horrors seem to have blinded many readers from the joys in this book.

The first of these joys is in its first pages. Paul D. does something which sets him apart from most men. As someone with scars I can tell you, there are those who pretend they're not there, those who ask, but a rare lover indeed who makes those scars an altar where he kneels.

Beloved would be a very short book. And a very easy read if Sethe could feel Paul D. kissing her back.

Read it for the love story. Read it to feel like a teenager again or briefly to become that woman with scars and man with heart enough to upturn her world.