Beloved by Toni Morrison - maybe the most important book you could read (Book Recommendation)

I should have read "Beloved" by Toni Morrison a long time ago. There's no good reason I hadn't. But this is a book whose story and writing clearly was deserving of it's Pulitzer and Nobel prizes. It should be required reading in high school. It should be required reading for all white Americans. There may be no more important book about our country than this one.

I won't do it the disservice of a review. I am in no position to be able to offer any remotely useful thoughts about it other than to champion it. So many others have written so elegantly and impactfully about it, that all I want to do is encourage others to read it.

It stands alongside the greatest literature and adds a deeply moving and painful entryway into better understanding how we are where we are. During a time with renewed hatred and marginalization coming from our own government, there could be no more appropriate time to remind ourselves of the way individual humans, and societies collectively, have dehumanized others in the past, and of how the legacy of that dehumanization continues to burn through our country destroying the lives and hopes of millions of black and African American mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends and strangers in myriad ways.

Read "Beloved" because it is beautifully written literature. But own "Beloved" in your heart so that you become an active fighter for equity and liberation of all people starting first and foremost with the neighbors at your door. We don't have to look far, to other nations and continents, to find rampant human rights abuses, the denial of fundamental human rights, and attempts to strip vulnerable people and groups of their rights, because those egregious personal and social offenses are being driven by the government of our own country, championed by its leader. 

It wasn't so long ago that it was legal in our country to own (think about that word - to OWN) another human being. Read "Beloved" because our president and too many of his followers seek to reduce black, African American, brown and Hispanic and Latinix peoples, migrants, asylum seekers, LGBTQ+, Muslims, and so many others to something less than human, undeserving of the protections of law, healthcare, education, safe food, a healthy climate, property, voting, work, and dignity. Read to remind yourself and light the fire in your soul that will spur you to action.

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Please legitimately purchase or borrow manga and anime. Never read scanlations or watch fansubs. Those rob the creators of the income they need to survive and reduce the chance of manga and anime being legitimately released in English.

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