Her fiction and her literary criticism plumbed the depths of how American literature powered the nation’s racial imagination and rewrote historical narratives about slavery by centering the traumas and joys of Black women. Morrison’s canon of fiction, which includes novels “Jazz,” “Song of Solomon” and “The Bluest Eye,” transformed American literature and earned her the Nobel Prize for Literature, the first for a Black woman. In the story, Sethe’s choice is refracted through an examination of slavery’s impact on Black communities and the nation as a whole, prompting readers to explore in the process their preconceived ideas about freedom, democracy, and identity – and the role of memory in the shaping of American society. The protagonist, Sethe, is enslaved and chooses to kill her child rather than have her subjected to rape and further violence inherent to that system. “Beloved,” published in 1987, is a brilliant novel about the horrors of racial slavery and the morally compromised choices that brutal system elicited. McAuliffe denounced the move, offering copies of the book at a rally on Tuesday. The Virginia gubernatorial race between Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe and Republican Glenn Youngkin’s reached a new low when the GOP candidate released an ad featuring a conservative activist, Laura Murphy, who campaigned against the teaching of Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “Beloved,” on the grounds the story’s grueling depiction of racial violence gave her son – then a high school senior – nightmares. Peniel Joseph Kelvin Ma/Tufts University/Kelvin Ma/Tufts University

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