Beloved (Beloved Trilogy, #1) in The Dusty Bookshelf

Jan 16, 2020 Fatin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed, owned, favorites, needs-a-trigger-warning

This book hurts. It hurts so good and so deep because we all know what Morrison is talking about, a point in history we've tried to forget and look away from. So barbaric and cruel in nature that averting your eyes makes sense sometimes.

Quietly fantastical, Beloved holds nothing back. Much like my own culture, it's not really a question of whether or not you believe in ghosts. You just know these things are. And so we know that Beloved just is. Is she a "highly vocal" ghost? Is she Sethe's baby This book hurts. It hurts so good and so deep because we all know what Morrison is talking about, a point in history we've tried to forget and look away from. So barbaric and cruel in nature that averting your eyes makes sense sometimes.

Quietly fantastical, Beloved holds nothing back. Much like my own culture, it's not really a question of whether or not you believe in ghosts. You just know these things are. And so we know that Beloved just is. Is she a "highly vocal" ghost? Is she Sethe's baby, who died nameless? Is she a representation of all those whose lives were taken (and not taken) in the brutal reality of slavery? Is she the guilt all manifest in themselves? Is she loneliness personified? We never really know but we know she just is.

My favorite part of Beloved is the thread of trees throughout. Trees as a place of solace and home, trees to mark our ancestral lines, floral trees marking a path home, and of course, Sethe's cracked back which looks like a chokecherry tree. When I was in my early teen years, people had just started talking about how to love your bodies. I remember looking at stretch marks spanning my stomach and thinking this looks like a tree. I loved them then. Today I can't really remember whether I still have those marks.

"Next she felt a knocking in her chest and discovered something else new: her own heartbeat. Had it been there all along? This pounding thing?"

Can you imagine? Can you imagine that your own self not belonging to you? Can you imagine buying your mother's freedom? Can you imagine restricting how much you can love because you never know when you may lose it or them? Can you imagine killing your own child so she does not have to live the life of a slave?

There is so much to say about Beloved but I just feel a big hurt right now. What Morrison wrote is so beautiful and complex. She leads you through this painful story bit by bit, breaking down harrowing moments over chapters and parts so you don't hide or run from what you just read. I shy away from books about slavery because I can't. It makes me view people, particularly white people, with a kind of venom that is almost savage. I don't like it. But Morrison does it such that hope remains. And she does it without losing any complexity - she reminds us that a slave-owner is a slave-owner. There's no one that's better than another. She tells us of how society comes together and also shuns. She tells of how one still needs to heal and learn to love openly, fully, thickly after freedom from slavery. ...more

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