From the Bookshelf of Reading List Completists…

Beloved (Beloved Trilogy, #1)

Toni Morrison

Start date: May 1, 2015

Finish date: June 30, 2015

Discussion: Group Reads

Why we're reading this: May 2015 Poll Winner
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What Members Thought

May 06, 2015 Matthew rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2015, completist-book-club, least-favorite, classic, library, historical-fiction, kindle

I did not end up caring much for this book. I really wanted to like it since it is a classic, but it really was a chore for me. There was so much time jumping without obvious breaks that it was difficult to understand. It also didn't help that there was a mix of prose, poetry, and stream of consciousness.

I can see how some might see this as a must read, but not me. ...more

111 likes · Like · see review

Feb 27, 2024 Jason rated it it was amazing

Shelves: own, favorites, 2024-top-10

Beautifully horrific story of theft, theft of people's humanity and to what lengths love can take you.

“Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves u
Beautifully horrific story of theft, theft of people's humanity and to what lengths love can take you.

“Whitepeople believed that whatever the manners, under every dark skin was a jungle. Swift unnavigable waters, swinging screaming baboons, sleeping snakes, red gums ready for their sweet white blood. In a way, he thought, they were right. The more coloredpeople spent their strength trying to convince them how gentle they were, how clever and loving, how human, the more they used themselves up to persuade whites of something Negroes believed could not be questioned, the deeper and more tangled the jungle grew inside. But it wasn’t the jungle blacks brought with them to this place from the other (livable) place. It was the jungle whitefolks planted in them. And it grew. It spread. In, through and after life, it spread, until it invaded the whites who had made it. Touched them every one. Changed and altered them. Made them bloody, silly, worse than even they wanted to be, so scared were they of the jungle they had made. The screaming baboon lived under their own white skin; the red gums were their own.”

I find that I am hesitant to read Morrison, because I know that her books are challenging, but after The Bluest Eye, you would think I would have learned that the payoff is worth every bit of effort. What do I mean by challenging? This is the type of book that requires (and deserves) a slower read, most books do not require the focus that I think Morrison's writing does; on a sentence level it is not difficult, in fact it is often deceptively simple and comprehensible writing, but you quickly realize that Morrison is working on multiple levels at once and she seamlessly navigates the reader from one perspective to another, from current storylines to memories (or rememory, if you please); Morrison builds in ambiguousness into her plots filled with doubt, overlaid with incomplete histories and magical realism - this may sound like a task to read, and it absolutely is, but the most satisfying sort of task. All these things seem difficult to keep straight, but once you find yourself in the rhythms of her writing, it is absolutely immersive. This book is also challenging for it's content - it is difficult to read much of the time, but the parts that are the most horrifying are not so because of unreality, but due to the worst parts of our history, in fact the central event of the book is inspired by the actual case of Margaret Garner. This is a book that asks you to grapple with trauma, listen to it, recognize it, acknowledge that trauma and all it takes from us, all of us.

“Let me tell you something. A man ain’t a goddamn ax. Chopping, hacking, busting every goddamn minute of the day. Things get to him. Things he can’t chop down because they’re inside.”

I don't want to give the impression that this is nothing but nonstop horror and trauma, there is a lot here and it is difficult, but this is also at it's heart a book about love - thick love. Our protagonist, Sethe, is a mother first and foremost, she is a woman that got her children and herself out of slavery - she escaped. As we see in this story it is Sethe's maternal love that drives her, it is what keeps her alive, and it is what might very well kill her. There are also lighter scenes of tenderness and care and glimmering moments of hope. Perhaps that is the most astounding part of this story, how one manages to continue to love after everything.

“Risky, thought Paul D, very risky. For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you'd have a little love left over for the next one.”

I don't know what to say really, I am no scholar, but what I can say is that I found this to be a remarkable novel - powerful and important. Turns out people are right about Morrison and specifically about Beloved. There are not many books that I want to reread, but I know I could benefit from rereading this for years to come.

(**My PSA as regards the recent banning of this book: We should not be banning books because it might make a student in a college level course feel...[what?] "bad"? Nor because parents dread having uncomfortable conversations with their children. Everyone should read about the horrors of slavery, torture, rape, and what dehumanization is. The novel allows this to be put into a personal and emotional context, and this should make them feel badly, it is not a negative thing to learn empathy. This is the perfect example of the type of book people should read as they are still forming themselves and their perspectives on the world. We all need to be challenged. We all need to be uncomfortable sometimes.) ...more

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