When slavery has torn apart one's heritage, when the past is more real than the present, when the rage of a dead baby can literally rock a house, then the traditional novel is no longer an adequate instrument. And so Pulitzer Prize-winner Beloved is written in bits and images, smashed like a mirror on the floor and left for the reader to put together. In a novel that is hypnotic, beautiful, and elusive, Toni Morrison portrays the lives of Sethe, an escaped slave and mother, and those around her. There is Sixo, who "stopped speaking English because there was no future in it," and .... Baby Suggs, who makes her living with her heart because slavery "had busted her legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue;" and Paul D, a man with a rusted metal box for a heart and a presence that allows women to cry. At the center is Sethe, whose story makes us think and think again about what we mean when we say we love our children or freedom. The stories circle, swim dreamily to the surface, and are suddenly clear and horrifying. Because of the extraordinary, experimental style as well as the intensity of the subject matter, what we learn from them touches at a level deeper than understanding. Review by Erica Bauermeister: |
 |
|
|
|
||
Book Reviews
Jaunted By Their Nightmares, by Margaret Atwood - NY Times
Excerpts
Excerpt from Beloved Ch.1. - NPR
AUDIO: Toni Morrison reads from Beloved - NPR
Excerpt from Beloved - Elsa Bloggs' site
Essays
= student essayIs Morrison also among the prophets?: "psychoanalytic" strategies in 'Beloved'- Iyunolu Osagie
'Sula' and'Beloved': images of Cain in the novels of Toni Morrison - Carolyn M. Jones
"To take the sin out of slicing trees ...": the law of the tree in 'Beloved' -Michele Bonnet
Postcolonial Experience in a Domestic Context: Commodified Subjectivity in Toni Morrison's Beloved - Mary Jane Suero Elliott
Reading at the Cultural Interface: the Corn Symbolism of 'Beloved' - Wendy Harding , Jacky Martin
"From the Seen to the Told": the construction of subjectivity in Toni Morrison's Beloved- Jeanna Fuston-White
Beloved and the Problem of Mourning - Teresa Heffernan
Narrative and Community Crisis in Beloved - D. Scot Hinson
Models of Memory and Romance: The Dual Endings of Toni Morrison's Beloved- Mary Paniccia Carden
Trauma and the Specters of Enslavement in Morrison's Beloved - R. Clifton Spargo
A New Hystery: History and Hysteria in Toni Morrison's Beloved - Emma Parker
Beyond the "literary habit": oral tradition and jazz in 'Beloved' - Cheryl Hall
Function or Frill: The Quilt as Storyteller in Toni Morrison's Beloved - Janice Barnes Daniel
"To be Loved and Cry Shame": a psychological reading of Toni Morrison's Beloved- Lynda Koolish
Truth in Timbre: Morrison's Extension of Slave Narrative Song in Beloved - Peter J. Capuano
Missing Peace in Toni Morrison's 'Sula' and 'Beloved' - Rachel Lee
Insignificant Monkeys: Preaching Black English in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury and
Morrison'sThe Bluest Eye and Beloved - William Dahill-Baue
To Be Loved: Amy Denver and Human Need—Bridges to Understanding in Beloved - Nicole M. CoonradtHiding Fire and Brimstone in Lacy Groves: The Twinned Trees of Beloved - Lorie Watkins Fulton, AfAmRev
Biblical Trees, Biblical Deliverance: Literary Landscapes of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison - Glenda B. Weathers
The Named and the Nameless: Morrison's 124 and Naylor's "the other place" as Semiotic Chorae - Elizabeth T. Hayes
Slave Narrative Retentions in African-American Women's Writings About Madness - Jeanne Phoenix Laurel
Transforming the Chain into Story: The Making of Communal Meaning
in Toni Morrison's Beloved - Claire Cowan-Barbetti
The mother-daughter Aje relationship in Toni Morrison's Beloved - Teresa N. Washington, African American Review
Reader, Text, and Subjectivity: Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' as Lacan's gaze qua object - Evelyn Jaffe Schreiber
"Signifyin(g)" upon Huck Finn: Morrison's Beloved as Cultural Artifact - Yukiko Fukase .PDF
The Politics of Abuse: The Traumatized Child in Toni Morrison and Marguerite Duras - Laurie Vickroy
To Garner Stories : A Note on Margaret and Sethe in and out of History, and Toni Morrison's Beloved - Dr. Peter A. Muckley
Revisioning History through Literary Characters: Louise Erdrich's Pauline and Toni Morrison's Beloved - Marie Nigro
Violence, Home, and Community in Toni Morrison's Beloved - Nancy Jesser, African American Review
"Postmodern blackness": Toni Morrison's Beloved and the End of History- Kimberly Chabot Davis, Twentieth Century Literature
Sethe's Choice: Beloved and the Ethics of Reading - James Phelan, Style
Looking into the Self that is No Self: an Examination of Subjectivity in Beloved - Jennifer L. Holden-Kirwan, African American Review
Beloved': Ideologies in Conflict, Improvised Subjects - Arlene R. Keizer, African American Review
Morrison'sBeloved: Allegorically Othering "White" Christianity - Peggy Ochoa, Melus
Models of Memory and Romance: The Dual Endings of
Toni Morrison's Beloved - Mary Paniccia Carden, Twentieth Century Literature
The Story Must Go On and On: The Fantastic, Narration, and
Intertextuality in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Jazz - Martha J. Cutter, African American Review
Other(ed) Ghosts: Gothicism and the Bonds of Reason in Melville, Chesnutt, and Morrison - Ellen J. Goldner, Melus
Revolutionary Suicide in Toni Morrison's Fiction - Katy Ryan, African American Review
Remembering the Disremembered: Toni Morrison as Benjamin's Storyteller - Elizabeth Lofgren NuttingMetal With Mettle - Jason R. GuercioMiscellaneous
Beloved Study Guide - Homework Online
Beloved study guide - Univ. of Warwick
ToniMorrison, In Her New Novel, Defends Women (1987) - NY Times
Scars and Self-Definiton in Beloved - Student at Kansas State University
 | to Toni Morrison |
Site copyright ©1996-2007 Anniina Jokinen. All Rights Reserved.
Created by Anniina Jokinen on May 21, 1997.
Last updated on July 30, 2006.
Toni, Morrison, Paradise, biography, life, interview, interviews, Toni Morrison, books, links, Beloved, Jazz, Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Bluest Eye, Nobel Prize, author, African, American, Woman, Women, Writers, Authors, writer, author, novelist, novel, novels, book, books, writing, Africa, Black, History, Slavery, contemporary, literature, Love, Grace, Nobel, Prize, Toni Morrison, Beloved, African-American, Black, books, Nobel Prize, African, American, Woman, Women, Writers, Authors, novelist, novels, Africa, Black, History, Slavery, contemporary, literature, Love, racial, Writers of Color, black history, great american novel