Beloved Memory

James McConkey--editor of The Anatomy of Memory: An Anthology--eloquently pronounces the place of memory in Toni Morrison's critically acclaimed novel Beloved.

"Of her novels, Beloved is the one in which memory is so important it becomes, indeed, subject. Beloved, the title character, is created out of memory itself--the memory of a mother, escaped from slavery, who cannot forget the enormity of her own offense, the killing of her infant daughter. Such a murder is as inevitable as any in Greek tragedy: it is an act of love, the consequence of the institution of slavery itself, committed to prevent the baby from being taken from her into the death-in-life bondage. Is Beloved, the young woman who years later enters the mother's house and life, an apparition or an actual person?" (212)

(photo borrowed from Never Lost)