Beloved — Toni Morrison
‘Death by a thousand cuts’ was a form of torture and execution practiced in China for almost a thousand years — it was banned in 1905 — which consisted in methodically cutting parts of the body of the prisoner and showing them to him. The goal was to keep him alive for as long as possible. This came to mind as I read this book. Not only because of the symbolic resemblance to the incessant torture endured by millions of African slaves — where as long as possible meant their entire lives — who were kidnapped and brought to the American continent, but also because of the way that Toni Morrison tells this story, revealing the horrors of slavery one, by one, by one, allowing us the tiniest window into how it must have felt to have so much taken away from you until you believed you were nothing. Where the best thing that could ever happen in your life was death.
‘Beloved’ tells the story of slaves, former slaves, freed slaves, and slaves born in freedom in the United States. It tells the story of Sethe, of her mother-in-law Baby Suggs, of her daughter Denver, of her old acquaintance Paul D, all of them linked through Beloved, the oldest of Sethe’s daughters, whose tragic death makes her come back as a ghost, tormenting some and comforting others. For the most part, the novel has two timelines: the present, where we find Sethe and her daughter Denver living in freedom in the Reconstruction era, the period that followed the Civil War; and the past, before the Civil War, when Sethe lived as a slave at a plantation called Sweet Home, until she decided to escape alongside her children and her husband. Toni Morrison moves between times with such ease and clarity that make the story flow smoothly, also combining recollections of the characters and their ancestors in a sort of collective memory that conveys that the past weighs heavy and it doesn’t really ever leave.
Toni Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for ‘Beloved’ in 1988, the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993, and received the highest honors in the United States for her contribution to literature. She became the first black female editor in fiction at Random House in 1960, and had a vital role in the advancement of African American literature into the mainstream. Her style demonstrates a mastery of her language and its narrative resources; she was someone who knew all the rules and how to break them. However, what is even more evident is her deep understanding of her reason to write. Morrison probably suspected, as other writers have, that only literature has the power to humanize in order to enlighten. Few have achieved it quite like her. To miss this book is to miss the best that literature has to offer in terms of art, historical record, and source of change.
The Civil War put an end to slavery turning millions of people into free citizens. Although, what did that freedom entail? African Americans were still persecuted, tortured, and murdered; their schools burnt; their houses vandalized. They were legally segregated for one more century — something Toni Morrison experienced herself — and discriminated in countless ways until today. You can draw a straight line to the most current examples such as the murder of African Americans at the hands of the police, or the habit of surveilling them in department stores. It is also like this, in our world as the one in ‘Beloved’, that the past doesn’t really ever leave.
This review was originally published in Spanish at Cuaderno Reciclado.
