The Reconstruction of Memory in Beloved: The Role of the Family and Storytelling

NADIA DER-OHANNESIAN

Jornada; XXXVIII Jornadas de la Asociación Argentina de Estudios Americanos; 2006

In Toni Morrison's Beloved, the importance of family as a matrix in which memories can be retrieved and recreated is clearly shown. This reconstruction of memory is mainly achieved through the instances of storytelling which take place between family members, thus recovering the oral tradition of Afro-Americans. The action of bringing the past into the present, which may be sometimes very painful, results in the reshaping of the identity of Sethe and Denver, first, as members of a family, and eventually as members of a community. Morrison's Beloved clearly illustrates the potential of literature and storytelling as a space in which traditionally silenced minorities can have a voice and keep alive communities of resistance (Giroux, 1993).