Beloved (100)

Ranks 100th on The Fictional 100

"I am Beloved and she is mine."

The following books will introduce you to Beloved, who said these words in Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved.

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Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Penguin, 1987.
- Poetic, moving, and rich in storytelling textures, this novel by Nobel Prize-winner Morrison is about a ghost-child who becomes a flesh-and-blood young woman to redress the past. She is the daughter of Sethe (to be played by Oprah Winfrey in the upcoming film), an escaped slave who committed a desperately tragic act of murder to save her baby from a life in slavery.
Furman, Jan. Toni Morrison's Fiction. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996.
- Shows how Beloved's return forces Sethe to remember the "disremembered" parts of her life and come to terms with them.
Samuels, Wilfred D. and Hudson-Weems, Clenora. Toni Morrison. Boston: Twayne, 1990.
- Includes excellent discussion of the background for Beloved in the true story of Margaret Garner, who had escaped from Kentucky but tried to kill her children when slavecatchers found them in Ohio in 1850.
Otten, Terry. The Crime of Innocence in the Fiction of Toni Morrison. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989.
- Guilt, responsibility, and the rights of children are some of the themes Otten tackles in relation to Beloved.