2020/142: Beloved -- Toni Morrison

This here Sethe was new. The ghost in her house didn’t bother her for the very same reason a room-and-board witch with new shoes was welcome...This here Sethe talked about safety with a handsaw. This here new Sethe didn’t know where the world stopped and she began. [loc. 2898]

Set in Cincinatti in 1873, Beloved is the story of former slave Sethe, and how the arrival of Paul D, a fellow slave from the Sweet Home plantation, is the catalyst for both oppression and liberation. Sethe, who lives with her teenaged daughter Denver, is mourning her mother-in-law Baby Suggs, and is haunted by the ghost of the daughter she killed to prevent her being returned to the plantation. After Paul D and Sethe begin a relationship, the ghost seems to be banished; but then a young woman, soaking wet, appears on Sethe's doorstep.

Beloved is an extremely emotional novel that deals with the psychological and physiological traumas of slavery. Though Sethe and Paul D are no longer enslaved, they can't forget or get past the appalling abuses they suffered at Sweet Home and afterwards. Denver, who was born during Sethe's escape, can't understand the sheer horror of what Sethe endured, though she sees the scars on Sethe's back.

One aspect of this story that really struck me was the depiction of the ways in which slavery in the American South destroyed families, destroyed any hope of family: mothers and children separated, marriage barely recognised, no way of tracing relatives. Sethe would do anything for her children, yet her two sons fled the haunted house and the murderous mother, and their fate remains unknown.

I found this a harrowing read, but Morrison's prose (and her ear for dialogue, for a Black voice) is marvellous, and I especially liked the non-linear narrative, the way that the story is built up in anecdotes and 'rememories'. I understand now why this is a modern classic, why it's a set text in schools (though banned in some US institutions), why Morrison is such an important writer -- the fact that she portrays beauty amid the horror, sometimes as part of the horror, makes the story incredibly powerful. I don't think I liked it, but it moved me and educated me.

Read for the 'Toni Morrison' bonus of the Reading Women 2020 Challenge.