Have you ever wished that you could read great writing, I mean great writing, by an author who is still living today? It seems that most great authors only receive recognition after they’ve already left. What would it be like to discover this generation’s Hawthorne or Chaucer? The literary canon is finally starting to open up to new authors who aren’t just the same dead white males (please excuse the frankness) that always have made the list. Finally, we’re seeing females make the canon, and we’re seeing novels become canonized before their authors have found their graves. We’re even seeing a new type of genre on the list: African American literature. Toni Morrison is a living American novelist, whose literature will be spoken about in years to come.
Beloved is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historical fiction novel that is possibly Morrison’s greatest piece. The name of the protagonist is a former-slave, Sethe. In her home called 124, she lives with her daughter Denver. She has been living there for 18 years, having run away from a plantation called Sweet Home but still does not feel free. They are haunted by the ghost of Sethe’s baby, who died without a name, but with a tombstone engraved with a solitary word, “Beloved”. Paul D, also a former slave on the plantation that Sethe used to work on, comes to 124 and becomes part of their life. However, he is not the only one who comes to 124; the past that Sethe has tried to forget will not fade; in fact, it manifests itself in the form of a young woman, who calls herself Beloved. Beloved is a captivating tale, and reveals much about the effects of slavery, both on the slaves and those that enslaved them. As its jacket describes, it is “filled with bitter poetry and suspense as taut as a rope.”
Toni Morrison just might be today’s Hemingway. She saw her 79th birthday this past February. I hope that she sees many more birthdays and that Americans recognize this great novelist while she continues to live among us. Her words undoubtedly will live forever.
