Annotated bibliography

"From the Seen to the Told": The Construction of Subjectivity in Toni Morrison's Beloved, in African American Review by Jeanna Fuston-White. 13 pgs. This book talks about Morrison's novel Beloved that 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..

"To Be Loved and Cry Shame": A Psychological Reading of Toni Morrison's Beloved, in MELUS by Lynda Koolish. 27 pgs. This text talks about Morrison's novel Beloved that Another narrator picks up on the scene, most likely a slave as the nature of the description suggests, and says, “[Sethe] just flew,” symbolizing her escape from this world as a result of the act, and “collected every bit of [her humanity] she had,” showing what little of herself was left after the deplorable act (163). Sethe returns and describes all parts of herself as “precious…fine and beautiful,” a fairly contradictory remark to the bloodstained clothing she dons, and being “carried, pushed [and] dragged through [a] veil,” like an animal because of her rag

'Beloved': Ideologies in Conflict, Improvised Subjects, in African American Review by Arlene R. Keizer. 19 pgs. This text discusses about Morrison's novel Beloved that One can understand Baby Suggs as a human being, but in the eyes of the schoolteacher and his company all blacks are labeled as a different specimen of animal. The schoolteacher is perturbed by the stare of 'their' eyes and has to exit unnecessarily discomforted by that elementary humanity. In comparison to the perspective of the slave catchers, Sethe and the others describe the situation with complete depiction of human traits including names and emotions of fear and sadness that the schoolteacher fails to recognize when he is sent to capture them. Paul D later says the act resulted from mistaken identity, she rectifies herself stating that it was not her, “job to [decide] what was worse,” but to, “know what is,” and, “keep [her children] away from what [she] knows [as] terrible”

Models of Memory and Romance: The Dual Endings of Toni Morrison's Beloved, in Twentieth Century Literature ...