"They do not love your neck,
TRACY DOYLE Toni Morrison Belowed, Charro & Windus, L11.95 EVERYBODY KNEW what she was called but nobody anywhere knew ber name. Disremembered and unaccounted for, she cannor he lost hecause no-one is looking for her. Beloved:
Foni Morrison, brilliant auctior bE The Blust Ere, Tor Bubs, Son of Soloman and Sula, has written a heautiful and complex new novel. at times more poctry than prose, with a depth of imagination that bus the power to curry you througl 500 pages without it pausc.
Set in north America in the mid-1800s, as slavery comes under artack from the aholitionists, Boozed describes: the struggle to escape of'a woman called Sedie This struggle for freedom is only Just beginnung as she takes hor children and flees the snuth. Sick, beaten, feet raw and swollen. Sethe gives birth to ber fourth child, Denver, in a boat crossing the Ohio river, drawing on the strength and spirit that characterise many of Toni Morrison's heroines.
*I did it. Tgot us all our. Up till then it was the only thing 1 did on my own Each and every: one of my babies and me tou. 1 birthed them and I got them out aud it wasn't no accident ...it was ine doing it, mc saying Go on and Now. me using my own hear. Ir was a kind of selfishness 1 never knew nothing about
But the freedom of the north b little more than an illusion. Faced with the threat of recapture, Sethe can see only one sanctuary for her children. If she thoughc anything it was No No No No No No No urshe: just flew and collected every bit of life she had made, all the parts of her that were precious and fine and heautiful, and carried, pushed, dragged them througl the veil, out, away, over there where no-one could hurt SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no. B July/September 1988 unnoosed and straight'
While the horrors he faced drove her husband insane, Sethe chooses death as the only place of safety for her first baby daughter, a daughter whose name is the one word no her tombstone Beloved'. Yet Beloved returns to claim her life and her mother. For Sche thore is no escape but to exorcise the past and turn ber rightoous anger back towards the evil thrust upon her life.
Building layer upon layer, bending past and present, the story moves on incxorably. Morrison's technique is to hind you, to seize and river you while she plunges vou into pain and horror; only to hold and fift you, to show you how Sethe stands linu and lights. 'As the reader vow.can.rake.comfort in knowing whatever it is has already happened so you don't have to be too frightened. You're going co find our about it, but it's not going lo be a big surprise, even though it might De awful. It may hurt you but 1 don't want to pull the rug out from under you," writes Morrison elsewhere ahnut
Many black writers, male and female, have written to celebrate Black survival. Toni Morrison, and other black wumen writers such as Nozake Shange, have given their attention to a specific and distinct aspect of this tradition — following the tears and hattles of those who BAlL
Like Pecula in The Bluest Ev. samic name, Sethe is a woman who is cast down or outcast, having killed her own child she now faces retrihution as that child retarns to haunt her lite and home. Oner her house was a: happy place, full of visitors and friends. Now it is cold and empty and the very Boors and boards will shake and shudder as the ghost vents childish anger and frustration
When the ghost appears in human forms, the girl Beloved succeeds in capturing the heart of Denver, Setbe's surviving daughrer and all rhat remains to her of the family she tried so
- someday somebody I Stand up and talk about me And wiile about mr — Black and beatiful — And site alout mi. Auri put so plays alma me Treckon ir'll be Me mysels! Yes, it'll be me. Tungrise Haber Nate an Commeicial Thentre! hand to free. To be showa the dark in Setle's past is nor to judge her or see her as a victim but to learn how we ourselves can learn to fight. In doing this Sethe is required to acknowledge the source of her pain, to reconcile bersell to Lie results of her own actions and then to turn her cnergy to shaking herself free. Free of the raint of slavery; and fren of the ghost that hauits
Finally Sethe contes to lind self-conlidence and self-alErmation, to rejoice in Herself as no-one elsc will, least. of all those who beat tier, destroved her husband, caused the death of her child: Sethe dearns to heed the words of her musher-in-law: in Lins here. place, we Desh: lesh that weeps. laughs, lesh that dances on hare foct in grass. Love it, Love it hard. Yonder they do not Inve vour fleshi they despise. They don't love your eyes, they just as soon pack them out No more do. they love your back. Yonder
And O my people. out vonder, bear me, they do not love vour neck unnoosed and
Belored is a beauriful and moving hook. Following u struggle by black writers. Beloned became the first novel by a hlack author to win a major literary prize in the Lisa when it was awarded the equivalent of the Bonker Prize this year. Inng marginalised and silenced by socicty, in their writing black wamen provide a powerful focus for reclaiming and resistance that holds a thousand messages for us all, but which is uniquely
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