Dolen Perkins-Valdez is the New York Times bestselling author of WENCH, BALM, and most recently TAKE MY HAND. In 2011, she was a finalist for two NAACP Image Awards and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for fiction. In 2017, HarperCollins released Wench as one of eight "Olive Titles," limited edition modern classics that included books by Edward P. Jones, Louise Erdrich, and Zora Neale Hurston.
By the time Toni Morrison published Beloved, her fifth novel, she had already won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was an acclaimed novelist. Yet it was Beloved that catapulted her career into the stratosphere, so much so that Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 for her body of work. This immense critical acclaim alone is enough to warrant our attention. Yet each of us readers must, at some point, approach the novel for ourselves, forming our own opinion.
When a reader first encounters Beloved, it has a similar effect of being set down in the middle of a corn maze. There is no clear path through, and the effect is profoundly disorienting. Even Morrison commented upon this initial encounter with her work, suggesting that she wanted readers to be thrust into “compelling confusion,” likening our placement into her literary world to the same kind of disorientation of an African being kidnapped and thrust into a completely foreign place.
When I first read the book, I experienced that very confusion. I didn’t understand what I was reading, but I understood it was something momentous. At the end of the second chapter, I flipped back to the beginning of the book and started over. I needed to more fully comprehend this 1873 Ohio setting, this Sethe and Paul D and Baby Suggs. What was this Sweet Home place?
I kept returning to a line of dialogue uttered by Sethe in just the first few pages of the novel: “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.” Ooh, Sethe! Now this was a character fully formed from the very first page, a Black woman both powerful and vulnerable, filled with pain and rage, but also with the single-minded clarity of a survivor.
Let’s be clear. There is significant trauma in the novel. No wonder it is often referenced by the misguided folks who like to ban books. The story of a family struggling with the memories of enslavement is not a fairy tale to be enjoyed like a warm glass of milk on a cold winter night. In some ways, one might even call the novel an American horror story. It certainly contains elements of horror and gothic and the supernatural. The house on Bluestone Road is haunted by a ghost. In African American parlance, we call them “haints.” But Baby Suggs, the mother-in-law of the main character Sethe, declares there is no point in moving. “Not a house in the country ain’t packed to its rafters with some dead Negro’s grief,” she says.
That legacy of hauntings is taken up again in Angela Flournoy’s 2015 novel The Turner House, when one of the main characters, Frances Turner, disputes the idea of a haunted house in 1958 Detroit. “There ain’t no haints in Detroit,” he insists. Yet if you have read that contemporary novel, one written in the literary legacy Morrison left behind for all writers, but especially for African American writers, you know that our country is still haunted by its history and many old houses still possess some version of cultural memory.
Yet Beloved is not a novel lacking hope. The characters are rebuilding their lives after a painful past, and in that gap they try desperately to hold on to the tenuous threads that connect them to each other. Morrison does not offer simple platitudes for her characters’ faith in the future; instead, she embraces their full humanity and complexity.
As my grandmama would say, You say that to say what, child? What I’m saying is that this is the kind of book that can change the way you think of history, the way you think of America, and the way you think of yourself. It is a book that reminds us of the resilience of African American people, the strength of spirit in all of us who call this country home.
In every book I have written, I have tried to capture that remarkable spirit. In my latest novel Take My Hand, I have crafted two sisters whose love for each other and deep connection sustains them throughout the book. When my main character Civil Townsend first meets them in the excerpt you will read, she is only just beginning to understand how the bonds of family will empower these young girls to survive a life-altering event.
It was as if Morrison was saying to me, to us—let me tell you what the novel can do that no other art form can accomplish. Let me show you how a painful tale can be told with heartrending beauty. Let me speak to you of communities and the individuals that inhabit them. Morrison taught us that history was not something to sweep away and dismiss as something shameful. In Beloved, the greatest historical novel ever published in the English language, Morrison challenges us to more fully understand what it means to be American.
By the time Toni Morrison published Beloved, her fifth novel, she had already won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was an acclaimed novelist. Yet it was Beloved that catapulted her career into the stratosphere, so much so that Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993 for her body of work. This immense critical acclaim alone is enough to warrant our attention. Yet each of us readers must, at some point, approach the novel for ourselves, forming our own opinion. When a reader first encounters Beloved, it has a similar effect of being set down in the middle of a corn maze. There is no clear path through, and the effect is profoundly disorienting. Even Morrison commented upon this initial encounter with her work, suggesting that she wanted readers to be thrust into “compelling confusion,” likening our placement into her literary world to the same kind of disorientation of an African being kidnapped and thrust into a completely foreign place.When I first read the book, I experienced that very confusion. I didn’t understand what I was reading, but I understood it was something momentous. At the end of the second chapter, I flipped back to the beginning of the book and started over. I needed to more fully comprehend this 1873 Ohio setting, this Sethe and Paul D and Baby Suggs. What was this Sweet Home place?
I kept returning to a line of dialogue uttered by Sethe in just the first few pages of the novel: “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.” Ooh, Sethe! Now this was a character fully formed from the very first page, a Black woman both powerful and vulnerable, filled with pain and rage, but also with the single-minded clarity of a survivor.
Let’s be clear. There is significant trauma in the novel. No wonder it is often referenced by the misguided folks who like to ban books. The story of a family struggling with the memories of enslavement is not a fairy tale to be enjoyed like a warm glass of milk on a cold winter night. In some ways, one might even call the novel an American horror story. It certainly contains elements of horror and gothic and the supernatural. The house on Bluestone Road is haunted by a ghost. In African American parlance, we call them “haints.” But Baby Suggs, the mother-in-law of the main character Sethe, declares there is no point in moving. “Not a house in the country ain’t packed to its rafters with some dead Negro’s grief,” she says.That legacy of hauntings is taken up again in Angela Flournoy’s 2015 novel The Turner House, when one of the main characters, Frances Turner, disputes the idea of a haunted house in 1958 Detroit. “There ain’t no haints in Detroit,” he insists. Yet if you have read that contemporary novel, one written in the literary legacy Morrison left behind for all writers, but especially for African American writers, you know that our country is still haunted by its history and many old houses still possess some version of cultural memory.
Yet Beloved is not a novel lacking hope. The characters are rebuilding their lives after a painful past, and in that gap they try desperately to hold on to the tenuous threads that connect them to each other. Morrison does not offer simple platitudes for her characters’ faith in the future; instead, she embraces their full humanity and complexity.
As my grandmama would say, You say that to say what, child? What I’m saying is that this is the kind of book that can change the way you think of history, the way you think of America, and the way you think of yourself. It is a book that reminds us of the resilience of African American people, the strength of spirit in all of us who call this country home.
In every book I have written, I have tried to capture that remarkable spirit. In my latest novel Take My Hand, I have crafted two sisters whose love for each other and deep connection sustains them throughout the book. When my main character Civil Townsend first meets them in the excerpt you will read, she is only just beginning to understand how the bonds of family will empower these young girls to survive a life-altering event.
It was as if Morrison was saying to me, to us—let me tell you what the novel can do that no other art form can accomplish. Let me show you how a painful tale can be told with heartrending beauty. Let me speak to you of communities and the individuals that inhabit them. Morrison taught us that history was not something to sweep away and dismiss as something shameful. In Beloved, the greatest historical novel ever published in the English language, Morrison challenges us to more fully understand what it means to be American.
Students could explore the following questions:
What happens when the past and present intersect? What is the impact of our history on our present identity?
How does what we remember reveal who we are?
What does it mean to heal? What does one need to begin healing, even while in the midst of suffering?
How do we create and maintain a community?
How does the social outcast help us understand what we’re trying to ignore? What do they ask us to change in our communities and in ourselves?
How do we cope with deep longing? How do we move on? How do we decide when it’s time to move on?
How does an environment influence populations of people over multiple generations?
What does it mean to be free?
What responsibility (if any) does the individual have to the family? When does that responsibility end (if it does)? When should it end (if it should)?
Students could investigate the following understandings:
Stories we believe about ourselves impact the way we navigate the world.
Becoming free is a process. As Morrison said, “[f]reeing yourself is one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self [is] another.”
Communities are integral in shaping and reshaping the stories that humans share.
Stories are living and ever-evolving. Students could explore the following questions:
- What happens when the past and present intersect? What is the impact of our history on our present identity?
- How does what we remember reveal who we are?
- What does it mean to heal? What does one need to begin healing, even while in the midst of suffering?
- How do we create and maintain a community?
- How does the social outcast help us understand what we’re trying to ignore? What do they ask us to change in our communities and in ourselves?
- How do we cope with deep longing? How do we move on? How do we decide when it’s time to move on?
- How does an environment influence populations of people over multiple generations?
- What does it mean to be free?
- What responsibility (if any) does the individual have to the family? When does that responsibility end (if it does)? When should it end (if it should)?
Students could investigate the following understandings:
- Stories we believe about ourselves impact the way we navigate the world.Becoming free is a process. As Morrison said, “[f]reeing yourself is one thing, claiming ownership of that freed self [is] another.”
- Communities are integral in shaping and reshaping the stories that humans share.
- Stories are living and ever-evolving.
ENGLISH Character Narration
Character Narration
Starting with Chapter 20, there are a series of chapters narrated by individual characters. We get to hear Sethe, Denver, and Beloved through their own words. What makes the characters sound different in these chapters?
ACTIVITY List the distinguishing characteristics of each character’s voice. Discuss with a partner the elements that make each of the women’s voices distinctive.
Next, select a neutrally-narrated chapter and rewrite a portion as if it were narrated by a character. For example, you may write about finding Sethe in the woods from Amy’s perspective, or you may allow Sixo to explain his thoughts about freedom as he walks to meet the thirty-mile woman. How would Amy sound? How might Sixo explain the principle behind his trips? What would their verbal tics be? Would they use witticisms, religious imagery, or humor? Use what you gather from observing and listening to your selected character to inform your writing.
Starting with Chapter 20, there are a series of chapters narrated by individual characters. We get to hear Sethe, Denver, and Beloved through their own words. What makes the characters sound different in these chapters?
ACTIVITY List the distinguishing characteristics of each character’s voice. Discuss with a partner the elements that make each of the women’s voices distinctive.
Next, select a neutrally-narrated chapter and rewrite a portion as if it were narrated by a character. For example, you may write about finding Sethe in the woods from Amy’s perspective, or you may allow Sixo to explain his thoughts about freedom as he walks to meet the thirty-mile woman. How would Amy sound? How might Sixo explain the principle behind his trips? What would their verbal tics be? Would they use witticisms, religious imagery, or humor? Use what you gather from observing and listening to your selected character to inform your writing.
SOCIAL SCIENCE Seeking Freedom through Faith
Baby Suggs attracted a large crowd for her weekly sermons after Halle set her free. In her Chapter 9 sermon, she encourages her worshippers to love their own bodies, something that was not feasible before: “In this place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass. Love it. Love it hard. Yonder they do not love your flesh. They despise it. They don’t love your eyes; they’d just as soon pick em out. No more do they love the skin on your back. Under they flay it. And O my people they do not love your hands. Those they only use, tie, bind, chop off and leave empty. Love your hands!” (103)
ACTIVITY Religion can help people find hope in the darkest moments of their lives. Find a local example of people or groups using faith to provide their communities with some form of freedom. Depict evidence of your findings in a photo story or a mini-documentary. Include how religious stories of redemption are used to inspire people who feel downtrodden. How and why are people uplifted by faith?
MUSIC Songs as Codes
When it was time for those enslaved at Sweet Home to escape, Halle began singing “Hush, somebody’s calling my name” to indicate that he’d heard the signal for them to escape.
Listen to this list of songs and make note of the characteristics that each song shares. Why might these shared characteristics be important?
Compose and record a song that follows the characteristics of a Negro spiritual. The song must explain how to navigate to some place on the campus or in the city. As a class, we will use the lyrics and a map to see if we would be successful in finding that place.
After the ACTIVITY , reflect on the following:
- What types of things did you have to consider when composing the song? (Think about audience as well as musical techniques.)
- What was it like to decode a song? How might the added pressure of escaping captivity influence the decoding?
- In what ways do we currently use songs as codes in modern society? How so and why?
Narrative4
