Beloved (novel) in the context of "Toni Morrison"

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⭐ Core Definition: Beloved (novel)

Beloved is a 1987 novel by American novelist Toni Morrison. Set in the period after the American Civil War, the novel tells the story of a dysfunctional family of formerly enslaved people whose Cincinnati home is haunted by a malevolent spirit. The narrative of Beloved derives from the life of Margaret Garner, a slave in the slave state of Kentucky who escaped and fled to the free state of Ohio in 1856.

Garner was subject to capture under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and when U.S. marshals broke into the cabin where she and her children had barricaded themselves, she was attempting to kill her children—and had already killed her second youngest daughter—in hopes of sparing them from being returned to slavery. Morrison's main inspiration for the novel was an account of the event titled "A Visit to the Slave Mother who Killed Her Child" in an 1856 newspaper article initially published in the American Baptist and reproduced in The Black Book, an anthology of texts of Black history and culture that Morrison had edited in 1974.

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👉 Beloved (novel) in the context of Toni Morrison

Chloe Anthony Wofford "Toni" Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford; February 18, 1931 – August 5, 2019) was an American novelist and editor. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Her first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970. The critically acclaimed Song of Solomon (1977) brought her national attention and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 1988, Morrison won the Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987).

Born and raised in Lorain, Ohio, Morrison graduated from Howard University in 1953 with a B.A. in English. Morrison earned a master's degree in American Literature from Cornell University in 1955. In 1957 she returned to Howard University, was married, and had two children before divorcing in 1964. Morrison became the first Black female editor for fiction at Random House in New York City in the late 1960s. She developed her own reputation as an author in the 1970s and '80s. Her novel Beloved was made into a film in 1998. Morrison's works are praised for addressing the harsh consequences of racism in the United States and the Black American experience.

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Beloved (novel) in the context of Underworld (DeLillo novel)

Underworld is a 1997 novel by American writer Don DeLillo. The novel is centered on the efforts of Nick Shay, a waste management executive who grew up in the Bronx, to trace the history of the baseball that won the New York Giants the pennant in 1951, and encompasses numerous subplots drawn from American history in the second half of the twentieth century. Described as both postmodernist and a reaction to postmodernism, it examines themes of nuclear proliferation, waste, and the contribution of individual lives to the course of history.

A best-seller that was nominated for the National Book Award and shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, Underworld is often regarded as DeLillo's supreme achievement. In 2006, a survey of eminent authors and critics conducted by The New York Times named Underworld as the runner-up for the best work of American fiction of the past 25 years, behind only Toni Morrison's Beloved.

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Beloved (novel) in the context of Margaret Garner

Margaret Garner (died 1858) was an enslaved African-American woman who killed her own daughter and intended to kill her other three children and herself rather than be forced back into slavery. Garner and her family had escaped enslavement in January 1856 by traveling across the frozen Ohio River to Cincinnati, but they were apprehended by U.S. Marshals acting under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Garner's defense attorney, John Jolliffe, moved to have her tried for murder in Ohio, to be able to get a trial in a free state and to challenge the Fugitive Slave Law. Garner's story was the inspiration for the novel Beloved (1987) by Nobel Prize–winning author Toni Morrison and its subsequent adaptation into a film of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey (1998).

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LINKED FROM (PARENTS)
← Underworld (DeLillo novel) ← Margaret Garner ← Underworld (novel) ← Toni Morrison
LINKS TO (CHILDREN)
Toni Morrison → American Civil War → Dysfunctional family → Cincinnati → Malevolent spirit → Margaret Garner → Slavery in the United States → Slave states and free states → Kentucky → Ohio → Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 → U.S. marshals →