Musings on Beloved...Continued From the Other Day

Does anyone actually like, I mean really like, the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison? I ask this after our discussion on dialect being used as a storytelling device the other day. It got a lot of feedback and most of that feedback that involved this particular book was negative. I’m not going to say it necessarily surprised me because I didn’t really like the book either, but it was curious. So I wanted to discuss it a bit further. And by "it" I meant this book.  

Now, I thought Beloved was a very important book to have read. I was glad to have read it. But I couldn’t say that I liked it. Interesting how that stuff works, isn't it? It's only happened with a few books. It was a very challenging and disturbing read. Any of you who have read the book I'm sure can understand what I mean. It's about a fugitive slave woman that kills her one daughter and attempts to murder her other children when she's caught by authorities and then spends the rest of the story haunted. See? Disturbing. And the dialect was very difficult to get through. More difficult than any other book that I can recall right now actually. But I cannot say that I particularly liked it.

But, if I recall correctly, the reason I picked up the book in the first place was because it had gotten so much critical praise. I mean, it won the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Times declared it to be the one of the best works of fiction in the last 25 years. It said these things right on the back cover.

But almost everyone I talk to thinks this is certainly NOT one of Morrison’s best works. So that begs the question then, what do the critics see in it that almost everyone else does not? Is it the subject matter? But it’s not like Morrison’s other books don’t deal in grim and disturbing subject matters as well. What do you all think? Or who out there agrees with the critics? Who thinks this IS her best book? All opinions welcome!

Fantastic Five Friday!

Well, I know the month is almost over, but I couldn't let it pass by without mentioning that it's Black History Month. But it's gone by so quickly (where has the time gone?). So this Fantastic Five Friday is going to be dedicated to those awesome African-American female writers that we should recognize even more this month than usual, but let's face it, we should be recognizing them every month. Now I haven't read stuff by all of these women yet but I sure do plan on it. Regardless, their influence and greatness cannot be denied.

So here it is: Fantastic Five Friday: African-American Female Writers!


Toni Morrison

Now this is an author I actually have had a chance to read. And boy oh boy, it was a doozy! Not for the faint at heart, lemme tell ya.
Morrison was the first African-American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. The theme of her novels usually focus on black women facing unjust circumstances (like I said, not light reading). And she's written some really famous ones, including: The Bluest Eye, Sula, Beloved (the one I've read), Tar Baby, Jazz and Love.

Alice Walker

Most of you will probably know her name from her ultra-famous novel, The Color Purple, that was adapted in the ultra-famous movie of the same name. Unfortunately I have yet to read this one but it's on my TBR. For that novel Walker won a Pulitzer Prize. She was also the one that worked to uncover the basically lost work of another famous African-American female author: Zora Neale Hurston. And she's a great advocate in the fight against female circumcision.


Maya Angelou

Known around the world for one of the most famous works ever: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she has been called "America's most visible female black autobiographer." She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for her work and has tons of poetry and other works since. Huge in the Civil Rights Movement she has also been friends/colleagues with basically every poltician since the 70s.


Phillis Wheatley

This one is an oldie but a goodie. She was a poet way back before America even declared independence from the British. Well, WHILE they were in the middle of declaring independence more like. She was actually the first African-American woman who had her stuff published. George Washington was a fan! Not surprisingly for the times, a lot of her stuff revolved around religious themes. She gained fame with a collection of work called Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. But most didn't at first believe that a slave could possess the literary skills to write poetry and she had to prove that the poems were, in fact, her own works.


Octavia Butler

An African-American female science-fiction writer! Oh my! No seriously, it's true. I have one of her books on my TBR too and I can't wait to buy and it start reading: Kindred. It's about black woman that is transported back to the days of slavery, specifically the early 19th century. Though she technically cateogized this particular novel of hers as not as a sci-fi, it kind of sounds like a mix between that and regular literature. Intriguing! Butler was also the first sci-fi writer to win the MacArthur Foundation Genius Grant.


So there you have it. Enjoy the rest of your Black History Month. Go out and learn something!