Spooky season is also Horror story time! Luckily for you our book of the month is ready for you, and this one has it all: ghosts, graves, and a haunted house. The book is Beloved, and the author is Toni Morrison.
Margaret “Peggy” Garner.
The book won the Pulitzer prize for fiction in 1988 and it is inspired by the life of Margaret Garner, an enslaved African-American woman who killed her little daughter instead of letting her be brought back to slavery by the authorities, from which they escaped in January 1856 crossing the Ohio River on the way to Cincinnati (yes, in January). They had to run fast and stay hidden, since the ominous Slave Fugitive Act of 1850 contemplated a forced "restitution" of the fugitives to the slave owners by the authorities who would find them.
I know what you are thinking: “Historically Ohio is not a Southern State though”. Of course it is not, but this was a law involved in the Compromise of 1850, so all the States of the Union were subdued to the horror, even the abolitionists.
On a Quest for Black People
Toni Morrison, on her quest for getting rid of the white gaze through literature, achieved a Nobel (first Black woman to get it), a Pulitzer for fiction, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a stamp. She has her face on the latest Forever Stamp. A medium close-up, to be precise.
Throughout her fertile literary production she gave new life to or created from scratch Black female characters with a unique depth of characterisation: infinite arrays of human feelings and attitudes combined in the kaleidoscopic inner worlds of the protagonists of Sula, The Bluest Eyes, A Mercy, Beloved.
A Spoiled Ghost
Beloved starts off with Sethe and Denver, mother and daughter, who live at 124 Bluestone Road and they know, everybody knows, their house is haunted. Two older sons of Sethe left home for good, while the community has cut the family out because of the rumours that Sethe once killed her two years-old daughter. Both Sethe and her daughter feel the presence of the ghost in the house, and Sethe is persuaded that it is her late older daughter’s.
Throughout the novel the woman develops a sort of fanatic emotional dependence to this ghost she calls Beloved, because it was the word engraved on her daughter’s tomb. Later on, after Paul D. (the principal male character) exorcises the house, the ghost comes back in flesh and bones, with the appearances of a young girl. The co-dependency between Sethe and her becomes toxic, to the point that the border between the two existences blurs. The gasps and the heaviness of suspense are strong through the chapters, and the reminiscences of the atrocities underwent by the former-enslaved characters contributes to a general mood of gloom and despair. However, Morrison leaves a light on, at the end. A little beacon of hope after a long, long darkness.
The Season of Self-Love
To sum it up, there is not just one reason why Beloved was chosen asfor this book of the month. Of course it is not just that this book has a ghost in it and we are near Halloween (we are better than that). One of the points of this narrative that caught our attention for the October spot is its vibe.
October is the door to the melancholic season, everything quiets up day by day and, although for some is the beginning of the best season of the year, for some is the beginning of that "seasonal depression" that drags them deep into their thoughts. If summer is the moment of activity and discovery, autumn is the moment of self-care, of getting back to the self (and to therapy, statistics say). Beloved is indeed a book that dwells within the inner selves of its characters. It talks about the role of love and affection in healing trauma, as well as traumatic love and unhealable traumas. Through telling the stories of lives dehumanised by the slave trade nightmare, it investigates grief and existential pain to the point of making even the most casual reader burst into tears.
And perhaps, this is the scariest part of the book: it relentlessly investigates your feelings, without asking permission.
