Slavery Is Still Alive and Strong

TONI MORRISON — BELOVED — 1987

REMEMORIED DISREMEMBERED MEMORIES

PT-Slavery-Stress-Syndrome

This novel was declared a masterpiece of English literature, but of course, we all understand that it is a masterpiece of Black American literature too, or probably first of all. We could, and probably should also qualify it as a masterpiece of women’s literature, both as for the author and as for the central characters. That is supposed to make you humble, all the more because the true story behind this novel is considered as the drama of an American Black Medea (Driven Toward Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and Tragedy on the Ohio, Ohio University Press; 2016). The core of this story is simple. A woman slave escapes and finds refuge with her three kids plus a newborn in Arkansas. Her husband (unmarried of course since marriage was not performed for black slaves in the English colonies and later the United States of America) disappeared on the day of the escape. A team of slavecatchers comes after her one month later and tries to re-appropriate the children. The mother hurts her two sons, kills the toddler daughter and menaces to smash the head of the newborn. The newborn is saved by the black man who helped her cross the river to Arkansas, the local sheriff arrests the…