Identity In Toni Morrison's Beloved

MAIN IDEA? As I was soaking in the words of the 258th page of Beloved, suddenly my mind was jabbed by a fist made of text; “Half white, part white, all black, mixed with Indian. He watched them with awe and envy, and each time he discovered large families of black people he made them identify over and over who each was, what relation, who, in fact, belonged to who.” (Morrison 258). I could have dodged and shuffled around the fist of text like Mohammed Ali, but it was too late. The words of the fist had reached my heart, hit my nerves, and attached itself to me, stunning my mind and movement. The jab gave my mind a bruise accompanied by a never-ending ache. Every time my bruise ached, it evoked the awe I had for each and every one of my family

Suddenly I felt the fist of text punching me into the reality of many African-Americans trying to find themselves, including me as well. I heard the voices of the “Disremembered and unaccounted for” calling out to their descendants, who will never hear them (Morrison 323). We searched high and low for the voices/a trace/family trees of our ancestors with the answers to our true roots, in order to fill in the missing blanks in our identities. Pieces of the puzzles scattered in antebellum documents. It is hard to find and accept your identity when all you have are records detailing how many of your ancestors some white man held. Doesn’t it fill you with that same awe, indignation, and dejection Malcolm X possessed when he realized his original last name, “Little”, came from the very slaveholder who owned his ancestors, just like many other African-Americans? For many African-Americans, knowing that their last name does not truly describe their authentic “African” roots leaves them questioning themselves. The realization that my last name originated most likely came from a slaveholder, sped at me and punched me as hard as the fist of text did; there was no way of dodging that one. It sent me into a state of aching and intense curiosity. What is so “African” about an African-American, whose African family trees were uprooted from their native land, dragged across the Atlantic Ocean, were planted and chained down into terrible soil, and died because their roots completely deteriorated in the