Beloved by Toni Morrison

I’ve been listening to old interviews with Toni Morrison recently and re-reading her wonderful books. I recommend searching through Youtube’s archive of interviews and clips. Toni Morrison’s voice is so calming and her written voice is no less rhythmic. Her insights and articulation of racism and white supremacy is so powerful, well researched and meaningful.

Reading Beloved once more as an adult, it touched me in places that it hadn’t previously when I read it as a teenager. Can a teenager understand the love of a mother and why she would want to protect her child so passionately from the torturous life of slavery that she would kill her baby? It’s more of an abstract feeling of love and imagining when we are young. The characters created by Toni Morrison are vivid with depth and emotion they stay with me long after the book has ended. I think and ponder at her story and the humanity in Beloved. The trauma captured in the characters, what they endure and how that shapes them or doesn’t. How former slaves feel self-love in a society and country that hates and despises them and their black skin.

What did being free at last feel like? What does free love feel like, or possession?

Toni Morrison helps us feel.