How Beloved unearthed the ghosts of a brutal past
BBCHow Beloved unearthed the ghosts of a brutal past Getty Images Toni Morrison’s masterpiece told the truth about race, family, slavery and memory in the United States. Vintage Toni Morrison’s masterpiece was first published in 1987, and has since been read across the world Storytelling in the late 20th Century meant that the female black body was at best peripheral or resigned to sidekick status, a half-present way of being in literature and film that became naturalised and even expected because of its ubiquity. Toni Morrison’s novels, her insistence on the humanity of her characters, her focus on their complex, fascinating, however ordinary lives, ushered in the work of other gifted writers like Gloria Naylor, Paule Marshall, J California Cooper, Octavia Butler, Toni Cade Bambara, Maya Angelou, Gayl Jones, Bernardine Evaristo, Edwidge Danticat, Jesmyn Ward and many, many others. Beloved was a reminder that no past goes unpunished, no past can be outrun I’m a black woman born in the late 20th Century.
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