Ten Minutes for Seven Letters

Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved portrays the sexual abuse and exploitation experienced by slaves and former slaves extensively. Though it is hard to read, the situations described by Morrison are stories that need to be told. In the many years I have taken U.S. history, slave narratives, but specifically female narratives discussing sexual abuse, have been left out of the curriculum and ignored. If one such experience was mentioned in passing, there has been very little time spent talking about the implications of the stories and how deep the impact was. The topic has been a part of a few novels I have read for English classes, such as Beloved, however because there has been little prior experience with the subject, many of my classmates and I have a hard time going about discussing it. This cannot be solely pinned on the lack of discourse on sexual abuse, because people feel uncomfortable and find it hard to stomach, however we should not shy away from ugly truths for the sake of our blissful ignorance. The people who experienced the horrors similar to those described in Beloved deserve to have their voices and stories heard.