The sun was rising as I finished reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved…
The book had sat on my bookshelf for a few years, if memory serves. I hadn’t cracked it despite numerous attempts to dive into its highly publicized and Nobel Prize-winning story of a former slave mother murdering her children to prevent them from becoming slaves. I had made numerous forays into the first chapter, but the foreign dialect of the characters gave a sort of Teflon repel—until it didn’t —that night before. I had latched. The psychological terror of the Fugitive Slave Act took over my world. Phone calls, meals, sleep--- all gone—until I got to the end of the book.
My guess is this all-night read was sometime in January 1990. Not long after—on a similarly very early morning -- I watched Nelson Mandela freed from prison after almost 3 decades. I lived alone at that time—and there was nobody to call so early in the a.m. as I was electrified by watching history unfold. If there was one person, I wanted to have on speed dial to share that moment with, it would have been Toni Morrison.
Beloved by Toni Morrison is available for sale on Amazon among other sources.
Read more heartfelt testimonials here -- Book Banning — Voices in Support of Banned Books
Read more about the Picture This Post Campaign to Stop Book Banning and Censorship.
Editor’s Note: Read related stories about Beloved here
