Critical Insights: Beloved, by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison's 1987 tale of Sethe, an escaped slave living in Cincinnati and struggling to overcome her past, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988 along with instant international acclaim. Several essays in this volume study major themes of Beloved, including motherhood, the pyschological impacts of slavery, and repression of memory, as well as connections to the real-life slave who inspired Morrison's story.