A Mother's Beloved

So many Epinions writers are making lists (favorite albums, favorite movies, gifts they'd like to receive) and I've enjoyed reading them. Lists are fun to make, and of course, it made me think about the ones I'd make, like of my favorite books (if that was an epinions category). I'm middle-aged and I majored in English Literature in college, so it wouldn't be easy for me to settle on just ten, but there are a couple that stand out prominently in my mind.

The Razor's Edge, by Somerset Maughem, is a survival guide of sorts for me, speaking to an isolation and restlessness that I have trouble putting into words. Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky transports me so completely to another time and place that has all the beauty and passion I want in my own life along with the danger that I am too much of a coward to live. But most of all, I'd choose Beloved, by Nobel and Pulitzer prize winning author Toni Morrison.

According to Ms. Morrison, this story is about the effort of a woman (an escaped slave named Sethe) to love, raise and be responsible for her children. After 28 days of freedom, Sethe is about to be found and she makes a horrific decision, to kill her children rather than see them live in slavery. Unfortunately, Ms. Morrison got the idea from a true story about a captured runaway slave who did just that in 1851. The actual woman and Sethe, the protagonist in Beloved, both knew all too well that in slavery, there would be nothing that, as mothers, they could do for their children. This was the one act of love that they would be able to perform and the only way they knew of to protect them. Beloved is extraordinary on so many different levels; it is the book that my mind wanders back to more than any other.

Beloved is the story of the love between Mother and children. You may be in disagreement with the decision Sethe made (many of the characters in the book certainly were), but it made me think of the mother in Sophie's Choice that sacrificed the life of one child for another in a split second decision that haunted her the rest of her life. I doubt any of could know what we would do in the impossible and hopeless situation a slave was in. Throughout the book, Sethe struggles with her motherhood, trying to mend it and understand her own actions, hopefully to put them to rest.

Beloved is the story of survivors picking up the pieces of their lives and trying to rebuild. All of the ex-slaves in this book are broken spirits who are trying to find the strength to live a valuable life. Their lives make for very interesting character studies; I ask myself, would I have the energy to even care after all that had happened?

Beloved is a history lesson. Toni Morrison said, " ...this had got to be the least read of all my books I'd written because it is something that the characters don't want to remember, I don't want to remember, black people don't want to remember, white people don't want to remember. I mean, it's national amnesia." It's true; I've heard one too many white people complain that "they never owned any slaves", that " it happened a long time ago". But we have never let this thing heal, and so it continues to fester. Jewish people have the right idea. We have so many powerful Holocaust stories and we need them. God forbid history would ever repeat itself in any respect of either tragedy. Beloved does more than just teach history, it really gets us into the skin of the characters. We are there with the characters, and this is pretty intense because...

...Beloved is a really, really scary ghost story. While I was reading this book I would literally wake up in the middle of the night and imagine I'd seen Beloved standing beside my bed. The character haunted my psyche, but she haunted Sethe physically and emotionally. This is not the book to be reading alone at night!

Beloved is the story of love, rage, wounds that heal and wounds that are yet to be healed. Everyone is haunted in this book and not just by Beloved. They all try to exorcise ghosts of enslavement, robbed dignity, physical pain, and their own inadequacies. This is a look at humanity through the microscope, and sometimes you'll want to look away, but it is a well crafted story that will keep you engaged from beginning to end.