Modern fiction: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison's 1987 novel Beloved won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. It is one of the most powerfully evocative novels about slavery and its unthinkable legacy ever written. It is based on a true story of a black slave woman, Margaret Garner, who escaped from a Kentucky plantation with her husband Robert and sought refuge in Ohio. Recaptured, she killed her baby to save it from the slavery that she had escaped.

Toni Morrison

In the novel, Sethe is a passionately devoted mother and as an act of supreme love and sacrifice she tries to kill her children to prevent them becoming slaves. She succeeds only in killing her two-year-old daughter and since she cannot afford to write 'Dearly Beloved' on the gravestone, the child is known as Beloved. Sethe now lives with her teenage daughter Denver and the house is haunted and rocked by the rage of the dead baby. The hauntings are only alleviated by the occasional appearance of Paul D, a man so ravaged by his slave past that he keeps his feelings in a tobacco tin. One day a teenage girl turns up. Is she Beloved incarnate? She knows the song that only Sethe and Denver share. Sethe is obsessed with assuaging her guilt and the opportunity to love Beloved.

Poetry: Phillis Wheatley, the First African-American published author

Given the hardships of life in early America, it is ironic that some of the best poetry of the period was written by an exceptional slave woman. The first African-American author of importance in the USA, Phillis Wheatley (c.1753-1784) was born in Africa (Gambia or Senegal) and brought to Boston when she was about 7, where she was purchased by the pious and wealthy tailor John Wheatley to be a companion to his wife Susannah.The Wheatleys recognized Phillis's remarkable intelligence and, with the help of their daughter, Mary, Phillis learned to read and write. At the age of twelve she was reading the Greek and Latin classics, and passages from the Bible. At thirteen she wrote her first poem.

Phillis Wheatley (c.1753-1784)