Banned book review: ‘Beloved’

Most of Mason’s Banned Book Club mem­bers would prob­a­bly agree that our most dif­fi­cult read had to be Beloved by Toni Morrison.  After we had read and dis­cussed it, one of our found­ing mem­bers plain­tive­ly asked, “Can we please choose a not-so-dark one, for our next book?”

The nature of banned books does tend to be less-than-buoy­ant, but Beloved may stand alone in its ago­niz­ing, grip­ping nar­ra­tive of the com­plete­ly remorse­less destruc­tion caused by enslave­ment.  We learn that even the free black com­mu­ni­ty was affect­ed near­ly as much as those still in bondage.  Portrayed here relent­less­ly is the cold truth that human­i­ty bru­tal­iz­ing human­i­ty is cat­a­stroph­ic in its legacy.

The book takes place in two sep­a­rate time set­tings, with flash­backs reveal­ing the hor­rif­ic past events which have pro­duced a dis­turb­ing present for the characters.

Sethe, the female pro­tag­o­nist, has been enslaved but is phys­i­cal­ly free at the start of the book. Through flash­backs, the read­er finds that men­tal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly, she is impris­oned still.  Eventually, we under­stand the mon­u­men­tal­ly unfair choice with which she is faced, the results of which will quite lit­er­al­ly haunt her and her loved ones until the last pages of the story.

The rev­e­la­tion of the whole truth does seem to pave a way out for char­ac­ters we have come to care for, just as it usu­al­ly will in our own lives. 

We are left, how­ev­er, with lin­ger­ing ques­tions about the super­nat­ur­al vs. real­i­ty, and, one hopes, with a firm­ly embed­ded deter­mi­na­tion that noth­ing like human enslave­ment be allowed to con­tin­ue anywhere.

So, why was Beloved banned?  Ironically, per­haps, the first notable ban took place in Kentucky, which hap­pens to be one of the set­tings in the book.  Parents com­plained to a school board that it was too bru­tal, too explic­it, and too vio­lent for ado­les­cents.  It is worth not­ing that Sethe, the book’s pro­tag­o­nist, is her­self an ado­les­cent when the abom­i­na­tions in the book are per­pe­trat­ed upon her, as were so many slaves.

It is also note­wor­thy that just a small hand­ful of par­ents suc­ceed­ed in ban­ning this book from a high school’s AP English pro­gram, a pro­gram designed for col­lege-lev­el learn­ing.  As we have seen in recent years, only a very few humans can suc­ceed in chang­ing the foun­da­tion­al frame­work of even a free pub­lic library.

While Beloved may be an uncom­fort­able read, the times demand our aware­ness of the dan­gers of cen­sor­ship.  The deter­mined effort to sup­press the truth of our own American his­to­ry must be met not only with resis­tance but with clar­i­ty on our part; we must under­stand our past in order to pre­vent a recur­rence.  Reading banned books will move us for­ward along that road, and this one, Beloved by Toni Morrison, will edu­cate us in our resistance.

Beloved by Toni Morrison is avail­able in book form at the Clark County Public Library. It can be pur­chased at most book­stores or online from Bookshop.org, a con­ve­nient way to buy books and sup­port inde­pen­dent booksellers.