The Forests of Toni Morrison’s Beloved with Philip Weinstein

In the Weeds

In our fourth episode on the forest in fiction, I speak to Philip Weinstein, Professor Emeritus of Swarthmore College and author of numerous books on fiction, including What Else But Love? The Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison, about the forest and the natural world in Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved. In this gripping story by the Nobel-prize winning author, the forest plays numerous roles, including that of a place of refuge - notably during Sethe’s escape from slavery -, a place exempt from institutional pressures, and a place that remembers a pre-European past and connects former slaves to an America future.
To learn more about the history of American slavery, listen to Slate's podcast with Jamelle Bouie and Rebecca Onion.
For more about In the Weeds, go to our website in-the-weeds.net.