Beloved: Pulitzer Prize Winner

Beloved by Toni Morrison“Something that is loved is never lost.”― Toni Morrison, BelovedIn observation of Banned Books Week 2023, I decided to treat myself and reread Beloved by my favorite author, Toni Morrison. In 1988, Beloved received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, as well as the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award, the Melcher Book Award, the Lyndhurst Foundation Award, and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award. When the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Toni Morrison in 1993, it was said that her novels were characterized by " visionary force and poetic import” and that she “gives life to an essential aspect of American reality." In 2006, a survey of writers and literary critics compiled by The New York Times ranked Beloved as the best work of American fiction from 1981 to 2006.Toni Morrison’s Beloved has been the object of challenges in school districts and public library systems across the country. For instance, in 2022, the Protect Nebraska Children Coalition brought an extensive list of books to the Wauneta-Pallisade (NE) Public Schools board meeting and wanted the books removed from both the elementary and high school libraries. This list of more than 30 titles includes Beloved. All books were subsequently removed for evaluation. In 2016, Beloved was challenged but retained as an optional summer reading choice in the Satellite Beach (FL) High School Advanced Placement classes. A parent admitted that he had not read the entire book when he addressed the committee, but wanted the book banned because of what he called “porn content.” In 2013, Beloved was challenged but retained as a text in Salem (MI) High School Advanced Placement English courses. The complainants cited the allegedly obscene nature of some passages in the book and asked that it be removed from the curriculum. District officials determined the novel was appropriate for the age and maturity level of Advanced Placement students. In reviewing the novel, the committee also considered the accuracy of the material, the objectivity of the material, and the necessity of using the material in light of the curriculum.Scholars say one of the reasons Toni Morrison’s books are controversial is because they address dark moments in American history that can be uncomfortable to talk about for some people. Beloved, for example, was inspired by The Margaret Garner Incident of 1856. Margaret Garner was born into slavery on June 4, 1834, on Maplewood Plantation in Boone County, Kentucky. Working as a house slave for much of her life, Garner often traveled with her masters and even accompanied them on shopping trips to free territories in Cincinnati, Ohio. After marrying Robert Garner in 1849, Margaret bore four children by 1856. At this time, the Underground Railroad was at its height in and around Cincinnati, transporting numerous slaves to freedom in Canada. The Garners decided to take advantage of such an opportunity to escape enslavement. On Sunday January 27, 1856, they set out for their first stop on their route to freedom, Joseph Kite’s house in Cincinnati. The Garners made it safely to Kite’s home on Monday morning, where they awaited their next guide. Within hours, the Garners’ master, A.K. Gaines, and Federal marshals stormed Kite’s home with warrants for the Garners. Determined not to return to slavery, Margaret decided to take the lives of herself and her children. When the marshals found Margaret in a back room, she had slit her two-year-old daughter’s throat with a butcher knife, killing her. The other children lay on the floor wounded but still alive. The Garners were taken into custody and tried in what became one of the longest fugitive slave trials in history. During the two-week trial, abolitionist and lawyer, John Jolliffe, argued that Margaret’s trips to free territory in Cincinnati entitled her and her children to freedom. Although Jolliffe provided compelling arguments, the judge denied the Garners’ plea for freedom and returned them to Gaines. He relocated the Garners to several different plantations before finally selling them to his brother in Arkansas.Emily Knox, author of Book Banning in 21st-Century America, states of Toni Morrison’s body of work, that: “What she tried to do is convey the trauma of the legacy of slavery to her readers. That is a violent legacy. Her books do not sugarcoat or use euphemisms. And that is actually what people have trouble with.” Dana A. Williams, President of the Toni Morrison Society and Dean of Howard University’s graduate school says: “Toni Morrison’s books tend to be targeted because she is unrelenting in her belief that the very particular experiences of Black people are incredibly universal. Blackness is the center of the universe for her and for her readers, or for her imagined reader. And that is inappropriate or inadequate or unreasonable or unimaginable for some people.”Toni Morrison often spoke out against censorship, both of her work and more broadly. Her comments in the introduction of Burn This Book, a 2009 anthology of essays she edited on censorship issues, are especially appropriate for today. “The thought that leads me to contemplate with dread the erasure of other voices, of unwritten novels, poems whispered or swallowed for fear of being overheard by the wrong people, outlawed languages flourishing underground, essayists questions challenging authority never being posed, unstaged plays, canceled films—that thought is a nightmare. As though a whole universe is being described in invisible ink.”In September 2022, as part of New York Public Library’s Banned Books Week celebration, the NYPL honored Toni Morrison. Her words printed below are engraved on one of its walls at its flagship location on 42nd Street.Access to knowledge is the superb, the supreme act of truly great civilizations. Of all the institutions that purport to do this, free libraries stand virtually alone in accomplishing this mission. No committee decides who may enter, no crisis of body or spirit must accompany the entrant. No tuition is charged, no oath sworn, no visa demanded. Of the monuments humans build for themselves, very few say 'touch me, use me, my hush is not indifference, my space is not a barrier.' If I inspire awe, it is because I am in awe of you and the possibilities that dwell in you.ResourcesToni Morrison on writing 'Beloved' (1987 interview)Toni Morrison talks to Peter FlorenceToni Morrison on Beloved | Hay FestivalWhy should you read Toni Morrison’s “Beloved”? - Yen Pham"Beloved" - Banned Books Week 2021Readout: Beloved - Banned Books Week 2020Banned Books Conversations - Beloved by Toni Morrison

Beloved by Toni Morrison is a dramatic historical fiction published in 1987 by Vintage Books. Morrison is an award-winning author of such prizes as the Nobel Prize in literature, the Pulitzer Prize, and many more. This novel was written with the purpose of exhibiting not only the horrors of slavery but also the psychological consequences it had on those who became free. Beloved adequately conveys these themes through the perspective of Sethe, a woman who was enslaved for most of her life and who tries desperately to run from her past once she achieves freedom. Reasons for Sethe’s grief include the mysterious death of her baby after whom the book was named as well as the everlasting feeling of repression that her owners instilled in her during her time on the plantation “Sweet Home” in Kentucky. Sethe’s issues also extend into her relationships. Her daughter, Denver, is constantly suspicious of new people who enter her mother’s life and constantly searches to learn more about her family’s history-a history her mother has worked desperately to forget. Sethe’s new lover, Paul D, who was also a slave at Sweet Home is extremely supportive of her strife. However, he cannot get her to forget about her true love Halle, who was separated from her when they left the plantation. Throughout the novel Beloved we as the readers see how Sethe evolves and accepts her past while more fragments of her past are explained.The significance of the title Beloved is that this word was engraved on Sethe’s dead child’s tombstone. Throughout the book this significance becomes even more relevant. Many themes are present in this novel, though I feel the most important ones are running from the past and inferiority. From the early chapters of the book, it is clear that Sethe has faced some horrible situations including the death of her infant child and her abuse as a slave. The scars on Sethe’s back serve to symbolize the permanent effects that her past in slavery has on her present as a freed woman. The theme of inferiority is displayed many times throughout the book, but the character who faces this the most is Paul D. Paul D grew up with two half-brothers, both of which shared the same name Paul, but with an A and an F.Two words I would use to describe Beloved are uncomfortable and confusing. Though these words have negative consequences, I believe this was Morrison’s intentions. I felt uncomfortable throughout the novel because of the excessive amounts of rape and because of some of Sethe’s decisions throughout some of the later chapters. Though these are unsettling events in the book, they are also very important to convey the atrocities that slaves were subject to. Of course, I could never imagine what it was truly like to be a slave, but I think Morrison accurately depicted the extreme physical and mental tolls slavery had on its victims. I also found Beloved to be very confusing because of its constant transition between Sethe’s time as a slave on the Sweet Home Plantation in Kentucky and her time as a freed slave in Cincinnati. This is not a criticism but simply encouragement to read the book a second time in order to develop a more thorough understanding. Morrison’s utilization of constant flashbacks served to add a level of suspense to Sethe’s life story.Beloved is an incredible depiction of life after slavery and the relationships one would make through it. I recommend this novel to people of all ages, but I feel like it is particularly important for white children to read. Slavery is a subject that is prevalent in every African American household even today, including many stories of the horrors their ancestors faced. Though I learned about slavery all through school, I was never able to put myself in the mind of a slave. For someone like me whose family never had to deal with any of it, it was especially mortifying. Beloved can be found on Amazon.com for $12.43 and free shipping with Amazon Prime.