Toni Morrison’s 1988 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is Beloved.
Published in 1987, the novel centers on Sethe, a formerly enslaved woman living in Cincinnati after the American Civil War. Her home is haunted by a spirit associated with the daughter she lost, and the return of a mysterious young woman forces the family to confront its past.
Morrison drew inspiration from the story of Margaret Garner, an enslaved woman who escaped to Ohio in 1856. Beloved does not simply retell Garner’s life; it uses fragmented chronology and multiple voices to portray how slavery’s violence continues through memory and family relationships.
Beloved won the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Morrison later received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, becoming the first Black woman to receive that honor.