Toni Morrison's Legacy Lives On

“I can accept the labels because being a black woman writer is not a shallow place but a rich place to write from. It doesn’t limit my imagination; it expands it. It’s richer than being a white male writer because I know more and I’ve experienced more.”

This quote was said by Toni Morrison, who was considered to be one of the greatest American writers alive. She was a novelist, essayist, editor, teacher, Nobel laureate, and finally professor at Princeton University. On Monday, August 5, 2019, Morrison died at age 88 due to complications of pneumonia. Still, her literary legacy continues to live on.

In one of Morrison’s most celebrated novels, Beloved, a desperate mother and slave Sethe kills her own infant daughter Beloved to save her from being taken by slave capturers. 

The character Sethe was inspired by Margaret Garner, a Kentucky slave and mother who lived during to the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act, which was part of the Compromise of 1850 between Northern Free-Soilers and Southern slavery supporters.

Garner and her family successfully escaped to Joseph Kite’s home in Cincinnati, Ohio, but on Sunday January 27, 1856, Federal marshals came with warrants for the Garners. Reminded of the horrors committed against her when she was a slave, Garner decided to take the lives of her and her children rather than having them return to slavery. She slit the throat of her two-year-old daughter, killing her, and left her other children wounded but still alive. Garner and her family were ultimately sold to a plantation owner in Arkansas, where she died in 1858 from a typhoid epidemic.

In Beloved, after eighteen years, Sethe is freed from jail (she was sentenced to death for her crimes of escaping and murdering Beloved) by white Abolitionists. Her life was seemingly peaceful, until a young woman claiming to be the adult Beloved arrived at her house. Sethe came to believe that if this young woman was actually her daughter, then the atrocity she committed never really happened.

Still, Sethe is continually haunted by the ghost of Beloved—who she killed due to slavery. Morrison’s powerful novel conveys that the ghost of slavery is inescapable and indelible—it cannot simply be erased or forgotten.

Through her various works, Morrison reminds us not to forget about the validity of the lives of African Americans in America—especially the lives of black women. Her writing makes clear her desire for the salutary chains of human experience, including the bonds of culture, community, language, family, and race, to be passed on through generations and to not be forgotten by the mass.


Courtesy New York Times

Sources:
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/margaret-garner-incident-1856/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/books/toni-morrison-dead.html
https://www.vox.com/culture/2019/8/6/20756895/toni-morrison-obituary-legacy-beloved-editor