ABOUT THE BOOK:
Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past. Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe’s terrible secret explodes into the present. Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison’s unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature
REVIEW BY DANIA: (NONE)
OTHER INFORMATION:
The novel won:
– The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988
– Was a finalist for the 1987 National Book Award
– Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, 1988
– Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award
– Melcher Book Award
– Lyndhurst Foundation Award
– Elmer Holmes Bobst Award
A survey of writers and literary critics compiled by The New York Times ranked it as the best work of
American fiction from 1981 to 2006.
The book’s dedication reads “Sixty Million and more”, referring to the Africans and their descendants
who died as a result of the Atlantic slave trade.
TRIGGER WARNINGS:
1. Ableism
2. Animal abuse (off-page)
3. Assault
4. Bestiality
5. Childbirth
6. Child death (referenced/haunting)
7. Death
8. Paranormal creatures (ghosts)
9. Physical abuse
10. Pregnancy
11. Racism (including slurs)
12. Sexual assault (off-page)
13. Slavery (backstory)
