Sethe Makes Lemonade

In Beyonce's Lemonade, the visual album draws together music, visual elaboration, and spoken lines. The contrast between the spoken poetry and the thriving beats that lay behind the music amplifies the effects of both; the gentle, eerie, music box-like background to the poetic elements served as a powerful antithesis to the smooth, often vivacious music that preceded and followed it. This magnified intensity of the two elements coupled with powerful imagery that follows the tone of the background pushes forth an unabashed exhibition of raw emotion.
Similarly, in Toni Morrison's Beloved, Morrison uses starkly contrasted imagery to convey the discordant humanity and inhumanity that follows slaves throughout their whole lives. For example, the scars on Sethe's back are described by Amy Denver as a "chokeberry tree". The natural beauty of a tree contrasts between the unnatural perversion of humanity that couples with slavery and beating another human being, Furthermore, chokeberries are a very sour fruit and are usually made into jam, tea, or syrup before consuming. This ties into Sethe's healing process. She needs to process the sourness of slavery into something sweet enough to look back on.
When life gives you lemons (or chokeberries), make lemonade (or jam). Perhaps both Beyonce and Sethe need medium to process their emotions, despite the varying severity of their woes.