Book Review: Beloved by Toni Morrison
LIBRO-BISA
Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987) remains one of the most vital and necessary novels in contemporary literature—not just for its profound artistic merit, but for the way it addresses enduring global questions about race, memory, identity, and historical trauma. For educators tasked with teaching writing or literature, even those less inclined to deep reading, this book is an essential tool for helping students engage with the complexity of human experience and the legacy of systemic injustice.
Set shortly after the American Civil War, Beloved centers on Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman haunted—literally and metaphorically—by the ghost of her baby daughter. Morrison’s narrative moves fluidly through time and consciousness, challenging the conventions of linear storytelling and demanding emotional attention. While the story is deeply rooted in the specific context of American slavery, its themes resonate across cultures and time periods: the cost of survival, the trauma passed through generations, and the fierce will to reclaim one’s identity in a world built to erase it.
What makes Beloved especially important today is how it helps students and teachers confront issues that are still unresolved globally. Conversations around race, decolonization, gender, and power continue to unfold in classrooms and communities around the world. Morrison’s work doesn’t just tell a story—it asks us to examine the stories we inherit and the ones we choose to carry forward. Her writing is rich, symbolic, and poetic, but also unflinching and political.
For educators exploring identity politics, Beloved is a core text. It opens space for critical discussion on intersectionality, historical trauma, and the power of storytelling as resistance. In a world reckoning with racism, nationalism, and inherited inequalities, Morrison gives us language to understand the personal toll of systemic violence—and also, crucially, the dignity and agency of the oppressed.
Though it can be challenging in both language and form, Beloved is a recommended read in high school and college courses precisely because it models what literature can do: evoke empathy, expose injustice, and inspire critical thinking. For teachers who may not read regularly but want to teach literature and writing meaningfully, Morrison’s novel offers a powerful entry point. You don’t have to be a scholar to teach Beloved—just open to conversations that matter.
Related Reading
Novels & Memoirs
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison – Explores internalized racism and girlhood.
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi – Intergenerational trauma from slavery to diaspora.
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead – Reimagines the historical escape network as a literal railroad.
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – A Nigerian woman navigates race and identity in the U.S. and Nigeria.
The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill – A sweeping historical novel about slavery and displacement.
Essays & Nonfiction
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates – A letter to the author’s son on race in America.
Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde – Essays on intersectionality, feminism, and Black identity.
Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You by Jason Reynolds & Ibram X. Kendi – A high school-friendly remix of Kendi’s foundational work.
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon – Postcolonial classic on decolonization and the psyche of oppression.
Orientalism by Edward Said – Essential for understanding Western constructions of the “Other.”
Shorter Texts
James Baldwin’s essays: “Notes of a Native Son”, “Letter to My Nephew”
bell hooks: “Teaching to Transgress” (on education as liberation)
Langston Hughes: Selected poems such as “Theme for English B” and “I, Too