50 Fun Facts About Beloved

In Beloved, where does Baby Suggs gather the town's Black community to preach that they should love their bodies?

The Clearing, a wide space deep in the woods, was where Baby Suggs preached, until she gave it up after Sethe killed her baby.

In which city is Beloved set?

Cincinnati was where Sethe's freed mother-in-law had settled, so Sethe sent her children ahead to her there before making her own escape.

In Beloved, which former Underground Railroad agent leads the neighborhood women to 124 to rid the house of Beloved?

Ella had shunned Sethe for years, yet when the grown ghost became dangerous she rallied the women who prayed and sang Beloved away.

Toni Morrison later retold Margaret Garner's story, the real case behind Beloved, as which kind of work?

An opera: Morrison wrote the libretto for Margaret Garner, premiered in 2005, while the real Garner had been sent back into slavery after her trial.

Toni Morrison found the newspaper story of Margaret Garner while compiling which anthology?

The Black Book was credited to Middleton Harris and others, though Morrison helped compile it.

Margaret Garner's trial set an Ohio murder charge against which federal law?

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 won out: the judge ruled that federal fugitive warrants outranked Ohio's charge, and the family was sent back to Kentucky.

Which word completes the opening line of Toni Morrison's Beloved, '124 was...'?

Spiteful: 124 was full of a baby's venom, and the haunting is one reason given for why Sethe's two sons ran away.

What is the dedication of Toni Morrison's Beloved?

Sixty Million and more: Morrison said 60 million was the smallest estimate historians gave her of the Africans who died through slavery.

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

Romans 9:25 supplies 'her beloved, which was not beloved', though there Paul is himself quoting the prophet Hosea.

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

The Hudson: Morrison had left her Random House job in 1983 to devote more time to writing.

What does Paul D do to 124's ghost on arriving?

Drives it out: as the house shakes, Paul D shouts and smashes things, and Sethe's daughter resents him for chasing off her only companion.

What is the name of Sethe's surviving daughter?

Denver finally overcomes her fear and leaves 124's yard to ask the community for help.

What is the name of the plantation Sethe escaped from?

Sweet Home grew far crueller after its owner Mr. Garner died and schoolteacher arrived with his nephews to run it.

In Beloved, what was Paul D forced to wear in his mouth after the failed escape?

An iron bit: with it in his mouth, Paul D watched a rooster strut the yard and felt the bird was more of a man than he was.

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

A carnival: on the walk there and back, Sethe saw their three shadows holding hands and took it as a good omen.

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

Howard and Buglar fled the haunted house just before their grandmother Baby Suggs died, and they never came back.

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

Halle bought his mother's freedom, but Sethe's husband never joined his family in the North: he vanished during the escape.

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

Stamp Paid was born Joshua; after a grave sacrifice under slavery he renamed himself, feeling every debt he owed was paid.

When schoolteacher and his posse ride up to 124, where does Sethe take her children?

The woodshed: schoolteacher found her there and, seeing what she had done, decided she was no longer worth taking back.

What ends Paul D's rebuke 'You got two feet, Sethe...'?

'You got two feet, Sethe, not four,' he tells her, implying she acted like an animal, and then he leaves 124.

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

It was all Sethe could afford to have engraved: she paid for those seven letters with ten minutes of sex with the engraver.

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

A pregnant woman: when the neighborhood women gather to pray and sing, Beloved comes out onto the porch naked and pregnant.

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

An ice pick: Mr. Bodwin, a white abolitionist who had helped win Sethe her freedom, was only coming to take her daughter to a new job.

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

Baby Suggs turned some food into a feast for ninety people, and the resentful neighbors failed to warn 124 when schoolteacher rode in.

What is Sethe's 'chokecherry tree'?

The scars on her back from whipping were her punishment for telling Mrs. Garner that schoolteacher's nephews had taken her milk.

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

A tobacco tin for a heart, its lid rusted shut, holds Paul D's past until his nights with Beloved pry it open.

In Beloved, what is Amy, the runaway white servant who helps Sethe, hoping to buy in Boston?

Velvet, in carmine red: on her way to Boston, Amy rubs Sethe's torn feet back to life and then helps deliver her baby.

According to Paul D, what was Sethe's husband doing the last time he saw him?

Sitting by a butter churn, butter smeared on his face: Paul D believes Sethe's husband had watched the nephews take her milk, and it broke him.

When Sethe mourns that Beloved was the finest part of her, how does Paul D reply?

'You your best thing, Sethe. You are,' he says after coming back to look after her, and she can only answer, 'Me? Me?'

Which major honour did Beloved receive in 1988?

The Pulitzer for Fiction came after Beloved had lost the National Book Award to Paco's Story, a snub that 48 Black writers protested in print.

In Beloved, which light-skinned local teacher gets the neighbors to leave baskets of food for the starving household at 124?

Lady Jones had once taught Sethe's daughter; the baskets came with the givers' names tucked inside, drawing the girl back into the community.

Which newspaper's 2006 poll of writers and critics named Beloved the best American fiction of the previous 25 years?

The New York Times polled about 200 writers, critics and editors, yet one voter, Slate critic Stephen Metcalf, soon questioned the novel's merits.

Which novel is the second book in Toni Morrison's Beloved trilogy?

Jazz follows Joe Trace, who shoots his young lover Dorcas, and his wife Violet, who tries to stab the dead girl's face at the funeral.

Accepting the 1988 Melcher Book Award, Morrison said enslaved people had no memorial, down to what?

A small bench by the road: the Toni Morrison Society answered with a project placing benches at sites in the history of slavery.

Which actor played Paul D in the 1998 film of Beloved?

Danny Glover played Paul D, but the film flopped, taking under $23 million in US cinemas.

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

Oprah Winfrey bought the film rights in 1987 and spent about ten years bringing Beloved to the screen.

Who directed the 1998 film of Beloved?

Jonathan Demme kept the novel's shifts between past and present rather than telling Sethe's story in order.

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

Colleen Atwood was the nominee.

Who played Beloved in the 1998 film?

Thandiwe Newton played Beloved as a baby in a grown woman's body, true to a ghost who had died as an infant.

In Beloved, which gift from Mrs. Garner does the stranger Beloved ask Sethe about, as if she already knew?

Crystal earrings: Mrs. Garner gave them, perhaps out of guilt, when Sethe was denied a real wedding, and Beloved asked after 'your diamonds'.

In Beloved, who breaks the chains of Paul D and the other escaped chain-gang prisoners?

A band of Cherokee freed the men, who had fled still chained together, and Paul D then wandered north as far as Delaware.

Which state's governor vetoed the 'Beloved Bill', which would have required schools to flag sexually explicit content?

Virginia's bill grew out of one parent's failed bid to have Beloved pulled from her son's AP English class.

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

Glenn Youngkin's ad never named Beloved, nor mentioned that the mother's son had been a high school senior when it was assigned.

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

The Nobel Prize in Literature made Morrison the first Black woman to win it, and in her lecture she said, 'We die... But we do language.'

What was Toni Morrison's name at birth?

Chloe Ardelia Wofford took the baptismal name Anthony at 12, and in college she began calling herself Toni.

In which Ohio town was Toni Morrison born and raised?

Lorain was where, when Morrison was about two, the family's landlord set their house on fire while they were inside.

Toni Morrison was the first Black woman to hold which post at Random House?

As senior fiction editor, Morrison published books by Toni Cade Bambara, Angela Davis and Muhammad Ali.

In Beloved's fragmented memories, where does she recall crouching among many others?

On a slave ship: her memories take in the Middle Passage, so she can be read as all of slavery's dead, not only Sethe's daughter.

In Beloved, which enslaved man walks thirty miles just to see the woman he loves?

Sixo made the thirty-mile walk to see her again and again, and when he was captured trying to flee with her, she got away.

In the real 1856 case behind Beloved, which enslaver tracked Margaret Garner's family down with US marshals?

Archibald Gaines was likely the father of Garner's three youngest children, a point abolitionist Lucy Stone raised at the trial.