Why beloved was written

No one it seemed missed their presence center stage and no one it seemed took them seriously except me. Now, I didn't blame literature for that.

Writers write what they like and what interests them. And even African American writers mostly men, but not all made clear that, except as background, prepubescent black girls were unable to hold their interest or stimulate their curiosity. Nevertheless, writers' lack of curiosity was not the point. To me the enforced or chosen silence, the way history was written, controlled and shaped the national discourse.

Racial history, for example, remains very much parallel to main historical texts, but is seldom seen as either its warp or woof, and seldom threaded into the whole cloth. These ancillary and parallel texts are gaining wide readership while remaining the site of considerable controversy.

Debates about reading material swirled in many high schools. I have to find the hook, the image, the newspaper article that produces sustained musing, a "what if? Beloved originated as a general question, and was launched by a newspaper clipping. The general question remember, this was the early eighties centered on how — other than equal rights, access, pay, etc.

One principal area of fierce debate was control of one's own body — an argument that is as rife now as it was then. Many women were convinced that such rights extended to choosing to be a mother, suggesting that not being a mother was not a deficit and choosing motherlessness for however long could be added to a list of freedoms; that is, one could choose to live a life free of and from child- bearing and no negative or value judgment need apply.

Another aspect of the women's movement involved strong encouragement of women to support other women. Not to have one's relationship to another woman be subordinate to a relationship with a man. That is, the time spent with a female friend was not downtime.

It was real time. The completion of the debate was more complicated than that there was much class conflict roiling in it but those were the issues surfacing with gusto. I addressed the second one women being important friends in Sula. But the first one — freedom as ownership of the body, childlessness chosen as a mark of freedom, engaged me deeply. And here again the silences of historical accounts and the marginalizing of minority peoples in the debate claimed my attention and proved a rich being to explore.

From the point of view of slave women, for example. Suppose having children, being called a mother, was the supreme act of freedom — not its opposite? Under U. It was also an expression of intolerable female independence. It was freedom. The writing is discovery of what that really means. I said at the beginning [of the book] the house was full of poison or venom, but I thought that was just the haunting. But the big question, it turned out, was who was in the position to judge what [Sethe] had done.

Who could say that her efforts to kill her children under those particular circumstances were wrong? Some people wanted her returned to the plantation because she was property. Other people, the abolitionist in particular, wanted her tried for murder, and that would suggest that she was a mother responsible for her child. From a stylistic perspective, Morrison's artistry in this regard is nothing short of breathtaking. The structure of the work is compounded with an ever-switching point of view.

Every character, even the dead ones and half-alive ones, tell parts of the tale. At one point, Paul D and Sethe exchange flashbacks that finally meld into one whole chapter 2. At another, the point of view switches off between four white people, who unreservedly show the biased point of view of some men who view slaves as tamed animals. The diversity of the point of view creates a tapestry of people who interact-individuals joined by past or present into a community.