Beloved, Toni Morrison. The first time I read Beloved, I was too stunned to grapple the significance. I read it again, and again, and again... and honestly, right now, I don't know how many times I have read Beloved, but every time I read it, I feel the same emotional turmoil as the first time. Beloved is a slave narrative and it is not. Morrison's radical use of language defines the relation between memory and history. She subverts the myth of slavery as a tale of the past; her narrative strongly recollects the trauma and experiences of the slaves. 60 million and more, reads the first page of the novel. Virginia Woolf, in A Room of One's Own, had said, "... we think back through our mothers if we are women." But, Beloved is a story of a mother haunted by her past, her slavery, and by her daughter, Beloved. Beloved is a maternal narrative within the structure of feminist fiction. Beloved was inspired by an original incident of a Margaret Garner, a young woman who had escaped slavery and was arrested for killing her child. Morrison said, "she was certainly single-minded, .... she had the intellect, the ferocity, and the willingness to risk everything for what was to her the necessity of freedom." Sethe's endurance is terrifying. Such acute retelling of the struggles of women and, that too, of women in slavery to be free, and such acute retelling of the "murdered,... the one who lost everything and had no say in any of it. ", keeps the memory of the past alive and makes it pertinent even in the present day. Morrison said, "To render enslavement as a personal experience, language must get out of the way," and this is what she does in Beloved. The story doesn't give you any introduction but takes you right to the heart of the setting and the mood is set for a brilliant story-telling. Beloved is fantastic, beautiful, and terrific. Remember to breathe while you read Beloved. :) #bookreview #beloved #tonimorrison #supernatural #feministliterature #blackfeminists #womenwriters #blackhistorymonth #blacklivesmatter #bookstagram #instabooks #bookaholic #booksoninsta #igbooks https://www.instagram.com/p/B99nQJnAIAc/?igshid=187idzzcvbo1j
