Friday, August 5, 2011

BELOVED






This a clip from the movie Beloved Starring Oprah Winfrey:

jackasscritics.com
This is a clip of Toni Morrison talking about her writing and her inspiration:

http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/tonimorrison/beloved.htm

This is a clip of Toni Morrison talking about Beloved:
imdb.com
 "Beloved is a novel by the American writer Toni Morrison, published in 1987. Set in 1873 just after the American Civil War (1861–1865), it is based on the story of the African-American slave, Margaret Garner, who escaped slavery in 1856 in Kentucky by fleeing to Ohio, a free state. A posse arrived to retrieve her and her children under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which gave slave owners the right to pursue slaves across state borders. Sethe killed her two-year-old daughter rather than allow her to be recaptured. Beloved's main character, Sethe, kills her daughter and tries to kill her other three children when a posse arrives in Ohio to return them to Sweet Home, the plantation in Kentucky from which Sethe had recently fled. The daughter, Beloved, returns years later to haunt the house in which she was killed, Sethe's home at 124 Bluestone Road, Cincinnati. The story opens with an introduction to the ghost: "124 was spiteful. Full of a baby's venom. " ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beloved_%28novel%29
A Review on Beloved :
"When slavery has torn apart one's heritage, when the past is more real than the present, when the rage of a dead baby can literally rock a house, then the traditional novel is no longer an adequate instrument. And so Pulitzer Prize-winner Beloved is written in bits and images, smashed like a mirror on the floor and left for the reader to put together. In a novel that is hypnotic, beautiful, and elusive, Toni Morrison portrays the lives of Sethe, an escaped slave and mother, and those around her. There is Sixo, who "stopped speaking English because there was no future in it," and .... Baby Suggs, who makes her living with her heart because slavery "had busted her legs, back, head, eyes, hands, kidneys, womb and tongue;" and Paul D, a man with a rusted metal box for a heart and a presence that allows women to cry. At the center is Sethe, whose story makes us think and think again about what we mean when we say we love our children or freedom. The stories circle, swim dreamily to the surface, and are suddenly clear and horrifying. Because of the extraordinary, experimental style as well as the intensity of the subject matter, what we learn from them touches at a level deeper than understanding."
Review by Erica Bauermeister:
From 500 Great Books by Women. 

http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4684809/Beloved_-_Toni_Morrison

Toni Morrison, the first black woman  and the eighth woman over-all to receive Nobel Prize in Literature. She was an astounding woman. Not only did she take over the world of literature but she also accomplished being a mother. She is an astounding woman who dug deeper than just the title of a 'mom' and lived a life being an inspirational mother.

 Website about Beloved:
"My first-born. All I can remember of her is how she loved the burned bottom of bread. Can you beat that? Eight children and that's all I remember."
- Toni Morrison, Beloved, Ch. 1
"a pool of red and undulating light that locked him where he stood."
- Toni Morrison, Beloved, Ch. 1
"If a Negro got legs he ought to use them. Sit down too long, somebody will figure out a way to tie them up."
- Toni Morrison, Beloved, Ch. 1



"I got a tree on my back and a haint in my house, and nothing in between but the daughter I am holding in my arms. No more running--from nothing. I will never run from another thing on this earth. I took one journey and I paid for the ticket, but let me tell you something, Paul D Garner: it cost too much! Do you hear me? It cost too much."
- Toni Morrison, Beloved, Ch. 1
"The picture is still there and what's more, if you go there--you who never was there--if you go there and stand in the place where it was, it will happen again; it will be there for you, waiting for you. So, Denver, you can't never go there. Never. Because even though it's all over--over and done with--it's going to always be there waiting for you."
- Toni Morrison, Beloved, Ch. 3


"Denver hated the stories her mother told that did not concern herself, which is why Amy was all she ever asked about. The rest was a gleaming, powerful world made more so by Denver's absence from it. Not being in it, she hated it and wanted Beloved to hate it too, although there was no chance of that at all."
- Toni Morrison, Beloved, Ch. 6
"Why was there nothing it refused? No misery, no regret, no hateful picture too rotten to accept? Like a greedy child it snatched up everything. Just once, could it say, No thank you? I just ate and can't hold another bite?"
- Toni Morrison, Beloved, Ch. 7


"I don't want to know or have to remember that. I have other things to do: worry, for example, about tomorrow, about Denver, about Beloved, about age and sickness not to speak of love. But her brain was not interested in the future. Loaded with the past and hungry for more, it left her no room to imagine, let alone plan for, the next day."
- Toni Morrison, Beloved, Ch. 7
"She had been so close, then closer. And it was so much better than the anger that ruled when Sethe did or thought anything that excluded herself. She could bear the hours--nine or ten of them each day but one--when Sethe was gone. Bear even the nights when she was close but out of sight, behind walls and doors lying next to him. But now--even the daylight time that Beloved had counted on, disciplined herself to be content with, was being reduced, divided by Sethe's willingness to pay attention to other things. Him mostly."
- Toni Morrison, Beloved, Ch. 9


"Only when she was dead would they be safe. The successful ones--the ones who had been there enough years to have maimed, mutilated, maybe even buried her--kept watch over the others who were still in her cock-teasing hug, caring and looking forward, remembering and looking back."
- Toni Morrison, Beloved, Ch. 10


The Toni Morrison Society
"The Toni Morrison Society is an official author society of the American Literature Association. Its membership consists of scholars and readers of Toni Morrison's works from around the world.  The Society's mission is to initiate, sponsor, and encourage critical dialog, scholarship, publications, conferences, and other projects devoted to the study of the life and works of Toni Morrison."
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