Toni Morrison on the creation of "Beloved"

An excerpt from the Foreword (2014) and Chapter One (1987)

I think now it was the shock of liberation that drew my thoughts to what “free” could possibly mean to women. In the eighties, the debate was still roiling: equal pay, equal treatment, access to professions, schools . . . and choice without stigma. To marry or not. To have children or not. Inevitably these thoughts led me to the different history of bla…