Published Paper Details:

Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) is a profound exploration of the enduring trauma of slavery and its intergenerational impact on Black women, families, and communities. Set in post-Civil War Ohio, the novel examines how the haunting memories of enslavement persist through what Morrison terms "rememory," where the past continually intrudes upon the present. This article analyses the intersections of trauma, memory, and motherhood in Beloved, exploring how Morrison redefines freedom, love, and maternal identity within the psychological and historical "afterlife of slavery." The study highlights how Morrison transforms the physical and emotional scars of racial violence into acts of narrative resistance and moral reclamation. Through the central figure of Sethe, a mother whose act of infanticide embodies both defiance and grief; Morrison exposes the contradictions of motherhood under slavery and the radical dimensions of maternal love. The novel's fragmented structure, spectral imagery, and multiplicity of voices mirror the fractured nature of traumatic memory, while its womanist perspective situates motherhood as a site of both pain and empowerment. Ultimately, Beloved functions as a counter-archive that reclaims silenced histories and converts private anguish into collective remembrance, portraying motherhood not only as a burden but as an enduring act of resistance, survival, and spiritual healing.