General Questions

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Q: What motivated you to write "Beloved"?

A: I had a terrible sense of reluctance about dwelling upon the topic of slavery. Then I realized how very little I really knew about it. When I started writing the book, I was honestly overwhelmed by how long it had been going on. This time period, 300 years, absolutely astounded me. 300 years--think about that for a moment. That's much more than just a war, that's generation upon generation. I was just so overcome by this thought alone, and this is what truly compelled me to write the novel. It's also why I dedicated the book to the more than 60 million black men and women who died as a result of slavery.

Q: What do you think it is about this novel that so many people have made a connection with it? Did you know it would have the impact that it did at the time?

A: I think the reason why it made a connection with so many people, is because I was trying to make it a personal experience. The book was not about the institution. It was about these anonymous people called slaves. What they do to keep on, how they make a life, what they're willing to risk, however long it lasts, in order to relate to one another. That was incredible to me. For me, the inhumane and torturous restraining devices became a kind of hook for describing what it was like in personal terms. I knew about them because slaves who wrote about their lives mentioned them, and white people wrote about them. There was a kind of ad hoc nature of everyday life. For black people, anyone might do anything at any given moment. Two miles in any direction, you might run into Quakers who want to feed you or Klansmen who want to kill you-you just didn't know. When you left the plantation, you were leaving not only what you knew, you were also leaving your family.

Q: Do you feel that there is anything about the novel’s setting in Ohio that is critical to the story, or could it have taken place elsewhere with a similar effect?

A: Ohio has always held a special place in my heart since it's where I grew up. It's been kind of a matrix for me, if you will. It also offers me an escape from stereotypical black settings since it is neither a plantation nor a ghetto. This is why, in my mind, it provided the ideal backdrop for the novel.

Q: Were there any other authors, especially within the Midwest tradition, that influenced this novel?

A: The only real influences for the novel, were Margaret, the slave whom I based Sethe off of, and who's story the novel is based off of, and the overwhelming sensation that I received from discovering how many black people were senselessly killed during this time, and how it left a scar on our country that persists even to this day.

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