50 Fun Facts About Beloved

Who wrote the 1987 novel Beloved?

It won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction the following year.

In which city is Beloved set?

The story opens in 1873 in a house at 124 Bluestone Road.

What is the name of the novel's protagonist, a formerly enslaved mother of four?

She was 19 when her daughter Denver was born, which puts her birth in 1836.

The novel is loosely based on the life of which enslaved woman who fled Kentucky in 1856?

She killed her two-year-old daughter Mary with a butcher knife rather than see her re-enslaved.

Morrison found the 1856 newspaper article about Garner while editing which 1974 anthology?

It was a Random House collection of texts on Black history and culture.

Under which law were Garner and her family liable to be recaptured after fleeing to Ohio?

They were found at the home of free relatives, the Kites, by their enslaver and US marshals.

What is the address of the haunted house in the novel?

Characters refer to the house simply as '124'.

What is the novel's dedication?

It refers to Africans and their descendants who died as a result of the Atlantic slave trade.

The book's epigraph comes from which book of the Bible?

Romans 9:25 reads: 'her beloved, which was not beloved'.

Morrison said the image of Beloved walking out of the water came to her at her boathouse on which river?

She described it as something she actually 'saw', though it never happened.

In what year does the main action of Beloved begin?

Sethe's daughter Denver is 18 at the start of the novel.

What is the name of Sethe's surviving daughter?

She was named after Amy Denver, the white girl who delivered her on a small boat.

What is the name of the plantation Sethe escaped from?

Its vicious manager is known only as Schoolteacher.

Which man from Sethe's plantation days arrives at 124 and drives out the ghost?

Most of the enslaved men at Sweet Home were named Paul.

Where has the family just been when they find Beloved sitting in front of the house?

It was their first outing together in years.

What are the names of Sethe's two sons, who ran away by the age of 13?

Sethe believes the ghost drove them away.

Baby Suggs, the preacher whose son worked to buy her freedom, is the mother of which character?

Halle is Sethe's husband; Baby Suggs is her mother-in-law and preached that Black people should love themselves.

Who shows Paul D the newspaper clipping about Sethe's crime?

It reveals why the community has shunned Sethe.

How many horsemen come to 124 to return Sethe and her children to slavery?

Terrified of Schoolteacher, Sethe ran to the woodshed with her children.

Complete Paul D's rebuke to Sethe: 'You've got two feet...'

He tells her that her love is 'too thick'; she retorts that 'thin love is no love'.

Why was 'Beloved' the only word on the murdered baby's tombstone?

She could not pay to add 'Dearly' or anything else.

What form does Beloved's body eventually take as Sethe wastes away?

Sethe barely eats while Beloved grows bigger and bigger.

What does Sethe attack Mr. Bodwin with, mistaking him for Schoolteacher?

The village women and Denver hold her back, and Beloved disappears.

The community's envy of the household began after Baby Suggs did what?

That envy, plus horror at the infanticide, isolated the family for years.

What is Sethe's 'chokecherry tree'?

A white girl described the keloid scars as 'a Choke-cherry tree. Trunk, branches, and even leaves'.

Paul D is said to keep his painful memories locked in what?

Beloved eventually pries it open.

Who delivers Sethe's baby on a small boat during her escape?

A white girl heading for Boston, she treats Sethe's bleeding feet.

Where was Sethe's husband Halle last seen, according to Paul D?

He is presumed to have gone mad after witnessing Sethe's assault.

When the grieving mother says the vanished girl was the finest part of her, how does Paul D answer?

She answers, 'Me? Me?'

Which major honour did Beloved receive in 1988?

It had surprisingly lost the 1987 National Book Award to Paco's Story.

How many African-American writers signed a 1988 letter protesting Beloved's failure to win the National Book Award?

Signatories included Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, Angela Davis and Henry Louis Gates Jr.

A New York Times survey of writers and critics ranked Beloved the best American fiction of which period?

The 2006 survey placed it ahead of DeLillo, Updike and Roth.

Beloved is the first novel in a trilogy. What is the second?

Jazz came out in 1992 and Paradise, about an all-Black town, in 1997.

Accepting the Melcher Book Award in 1988, Morrison said there was no memorial to enslaved people, not even what?

The Toni Morrison Society has since installed 'benches by the road' at historic sites, the first on Sullivan's Island in 2008.

Where was the first 'Bench by the Road' dedicated in 2008?

About 40% of enslaved Africans brought to the US entered there.

Who produced and starred in the 1998 film adaptation of Beloved?

It was the first film produced by her company Harpo Films.

Who directed the 1998 film of Beloved?

Danny Glover and Thandiwe Newton co-starred; despite good reviews it was a box-office bomb.

The 1998 film earned its only Oscar nomination in which category?

Colleen Atwood was the nominee.

Who played Beloved in the 1998 film?

Kimberly Elise played Denver and Danny Glover was Paul D.

Beloved was broadcast in 2016 as a ten-part serial by which broadcaster?

Patricia Cumper adapted it for the 15 Minute Drama slot.

Beloved was banned in at least how many US schools during the 2021-22 academic year?

Common stated reasons include bestiality, infanticide, sex and violence.

The 'Beloved Bill', which would have required schools to flag sexually explicit content, was vetoed by Governor Terry McAuliffe of which state?

Terry McAuliffe's veto became a flashpoint in his 2021 race against Glenn Youngkin.

Which candidate ran a TV ad in 2021 featuring a parent's campaign against Beloved and went on to win the governorship?

McAuliffe had said in a debate that parents should not be telling schools what to teach.

Which international award did the author of Beloved win in 1993?

She was the first Black woman to win it.

What was the author's birth name?

Her nickname came from the baptismal name Anthony, taken when she became a Catholic at 12.

In which Ohio town was the author born and raised?

It lies west of Cleveland on Lake Erie.

Before her fame as a novelist, the author was the first Black woman to hold what post at Random House?

She began at its textbook division in Syracuse before moving to New York.

Which scholar has argued that Beloved is not a ghost at all but a real girl in a case of mistaken identity?

In this reading, Beloved is a survivor haunted by the loss of her African parents who takes Sethe for her mother.

Which novel unexpectedly beat Beloved to the 1987 National Book Award for Fiction?

The upset prompted 48 Black writers and critics, including Maya Angelou and Henry Louis Gates Jr., to publish a protest letter in the New York Times Book Review.

In the real 1856 case behind the novel, who was Margaret Garner's enslaver who tracked her family to Cincinnati?

Garner had fled Maplewood Farm in Richwood, Kentucky, and was found at the home of her free relatives, the Kites, by Gaines and US marshals.