Who recommends it
- The Most Life Changing BooksReading list
Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a life-changing novel about a woman named Sethe who is haunted by the ghost of her dead daughter. The novel is set in the post-Civil War era, and it examines the psychological effects of slavery on both slaves and their owners.
- Julian ZelizerInterview
Beloved by Toni Morrison. Signed copy from my college days at Brandeis University. She spoke and signed books after. I’ll never forget that.
- Devi LaskarInterview
Good question. I’d give them Beloved by Toni Morrison, Migritude by Shailja Patel and The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka. I think the alien should know that we are a violent species capable of doing as much good as bad.
- Karen RinaldiInterview
- Megan CollinsInterview
For inspiration and interviews about the process from other authors in the trenches, I’d require Novel Ideas: Contemporary Authors Share the Creative Process by Barbara Shoup and Margaret Love-Denman. For a craft text that pays particularly close attention to the ins and outs of plotting, I’d require Save the Cat!…
- Keith FrankishInterview
It sounds pretentious, but I must mention Shakespeare. Again, I discovered him for myself in my teens, reading a facsimile of the First Folio which my dad bought me. I love seeing Shakespeare’s plays on stage, but more than anything I love his language, his outrageous, breath-taking skill with words, and I read him a…
- Dominique ChristinaInterview
Beloved by Toni Morrison. Because everyone should. It’s a haunting. It’s a ritual. It’s alchemy. It’s ancestral. It’s so holy I have to hold onto things so I don’t float away while reading it.
- Phillip B. WilliamsInterview
Beloved by Toni Morrison let me know that I could write anything I wanted. Anything. I could have my narrator do funky things with voice and point of view. I could use an important historical moment to write mythologically about my people. I could sing on the page!
- The Scariest Books Ever WrittenReading list
This book is the definition of haunted. Haunted by the past. By the things we had to do. By the things that were forced upon us. By sacrifice in the name of love, and how that can grow and grow and grow and become something monstrous. How terrible the forces outside of ourselves can be and how they can birth something…
- Gina WohlsdorfInterview
Beloved by Toni Morrison. I read it when I was 16. I finished the last couple of pages — that benediction, that haunting coda — holding my breath. And I knew the wonderful, terrible moment where you decide what you must do with your life, the heights you must reach, and that you will probably never reach them. But as…
- A Brief History of Toni MorrisonArticle
Toni Morrison (1931-2019) was an American novelist, editor, and professor. She was a prominent figure in contemporary American literature and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Morrison’s novels often explored the African American experience and were known for their rich language, complex characters…
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