I decided to read this book after I saw the author promoting a fundraiser for PEN America to combat book banning. She partnered with Penguin Random House to create an unburnable version of her often-banned novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. She is depicted with a flame thrower. Margaret Atwood is among the top twenty authors banned, with three titles and fifteen bans in eleven districts. One of the positive results of book banning is that many readers will read them to find out why they’re being suppressed. She’s also an accomplished author with over fifty books translated into 35 languages. This […]
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Beloved by Toni Morrison, Reviewed by Mark D. Walker
What better time to review this influential novel than the first day of Black History Month? Although a piece of fiction, it accomplishes the objective set out in the introduction, “I wanted the reader to be kidnapped, thrown ruthlessly into an alien environment as the first step into a shared experience with the book’s population—just as the characters were snatched from one place to another, from any place to any other, without preparation or defense.” She provides an unflinching look into the abyss of slavery. Published in 1987, set after the American Civil War, the novel tells of a dysfunctional […]
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