30 Books in 30 Beach Days Day 21: "Home"
- bostonbookworm22
- Aug 17, 2017
- 2 min read
With everything going on in the news, today feels like a particularly good day to share a particularly good book from the particularly impressive canon of American literary genius Toni Morrison. She wrote this novel, Home, in 2012 when she was in her mid-80s, but the crispness, precision, and restraint that have defined her writing style is ever-present. Moreover, Home is firmly rooted in the everyday, the heartbreakingly real, the true memories that real people just can't shake. She does not include any supernatural elements to her story, as she does in Beloved, but it's just as gripping. She writes with clipped fatigue; the reader understands the characters' utter exhaustion -- they have been drained by life.
This is a story of a homecoming. It tells the tale of Frank Money, an African-American man who can't wait to escape from Lotus, his Georgia hometown. He joins the army and is sent to Korea, and when he returns he suffers from PTSD and finds himself in a segregated country that neither appreciates his service nor truly wants him back. As George struggles to come to terms with his memories, he strives to find his sister, Cee, who suffers from a medical procedure gone very wrong. Together, they make their way back to the town they once called home.
It's interesting how Morrison explores the concept of home here. What makes a home? Does it have to be a beloved place? Can a place be "home" if it rejects its inhabitants? Can it be a "home" if its inhabitants reject it? She beautifully showcases how this sibling protagonists struggle to carve out a place for themselves in a world they find hostile, and how their love for one another fortifies them when little else can.
It's interesting to see how Morrison focuses on a period in American history that is often romanticized for its greatness, morality, simplicity -- and exposes that it could also be ugly, and unforgiving, and cruel. It's as important now as it was then that all stories, by all voices, are told.
Rating: 5/5
