God Help the Child

A girl named Lula Ann is born, dark black, to her light-skinned mother, who promptly rejects her and treats her without love as a child, demanding that Lula call her "Sweetness" instead of "Mother". As an adult, Lula Ann renames herself Bride and wears only white, exulting in her beauty, but still dealing with the abuse she endured as a child. A teacher that was put into jail largely on her testimony is released and then her boyfriend leaves, dealing with his own childhood demons.

A story that explores racism, colorism, childhood trauma, and more with Morrison's signature fine writing and complex characters. It makes an interesting counterpoint to The Bluest Eye, which I read most recently, as it addresses some of those same ideas of show more self-love in a world that doesn't accept you, but in a very different way. Not my favorite of Morrison's work, but still well worth reading. show less

I went into this with no expectations and found a powerful, moving, and vulnerable love story. A love story within a family, with a lover, and above all, with oneself. Morrison has said so much, making elegant and eloquent points, without feeling the need to dive unnecessarily into weighty details. Instead, in under 200 pages, she manages to explore family dynamics in two different families, friendship, the evils of sexual abuse and the ignoring of it in our society, self-exploration and love, and human weakness and kindness. Really excellently done. 4.5 stars.

78. God Help the Child by Toni Morrison
2015, 178 page hardcover
read Dec 6-9
Rating: 4 stars

I've learned to be wary of Morrison's later books and I had read some qualified negative comments about this before I started - vaguely to the affect the book was very discomforting. So I read it sort of on guard, looking out for some really bad stuff, and also with very limited expectations. What I found was pretty good book.

Child abuse is a re-occurring theme in this novel, and the source of most reader discomfort. In Bride's case it starts with being born with very dark skin, despite having two light-skinned African-American parents. Dad disappears with false claims of infidelity, and mom, Sweetness, raises Bride by withholding affection for show more the daughter she is ashamed of. But Bride is born in the 1990's California, and by 2015 her very dark skin color has become attractive, especially when she wears white, which she always does. She becomes "a midnight Galatea". It helps make her very successful. You can begin your racial analysis now.

Morrison works in a lot of her themes on race and the hollowness of American consumerist culture and the fall of America - this last is a theme I have found in all the authors I'm reading lately - McCarthy, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jennifer Egan. Bride's boyfriend, who abandons her on page 8 saying, "You not the woman I want", looks deeply into the intellectual side of racism, especially it's economic drive. I thought this line was notable for all of Morrison's writing: "...he read Frederick Douglas’s biography again, relishing for the first time the eloquence that both hid and displayed his hatred." As a young black man in search of a purpose, he also picks up from Son in Tar Baby, and maybe from Milkman in Song of Solomon. I tried to find Morrison's own deceased son in him, and maybe there was some of that.

But, and this is important, Morrison contains all this stuff. And out comes a novel with a lot going on, that is talking about a lot of stuff without directly saying so. I think it's notable that there are white characters in here and, while maybe not exactly likable, that they are human and very small in big world. They don't represent, for example, white empowerment, at least not so overtly as in Tar Baby. The point I'm trying to make is that she is working within the novel's constraints with a lot of success. A lot is going within the text and what comes out is complex and interesting and still readable work evolves. It's not one of her great novels, but it's one to get the reader thinking.

The complexity makes picking up key themes very difficult, it really becomes one of selecting themes. But child abuse, rape, abduction and murder aren't little things you just slip into a book. I'm on a bit of limb here, but I felt a key theme throughout was one of power play - on controlling and being controlled - through economics, slavery, murder, vengeance, rape, abuse, relationships, and, of course, racism, sexism and parenting.

2015
https://www.librarything.com/topic/197329#5376616 show less

No one writes only masterpieces. So long as human beings write novels and short stories (and, of course, a host of other things), quality will vary. It is nevertheless disappointing—sometimes very disappointing—to read a work whose quality simply doesn’t rise to the level an author’s best works. Sadly, that is the case with this book, the last novel that Toni Morrison wrote. Childhood trauma can have lifelong consequences: that’s the message here and it is, of course, inarguable. What also seems inarguable is that this is really no more than a novella bulked up with repetition and unnecessary tangents, hampered by a lack of any real character development, and suffering from characters who are—with a single exception who show more doesn’t fully appear until very late in the book—simply neither sympathetic nor all that interesting. The book was not especially well-received and it is easy to see why. There is little here that Morrison hasn’t addressed in other books and much better in every case. If you’re new to Morrison, I would urge you to read her other books: read The Bluest Eye if you want to know what she can do oh-so-powerfully with cruelty, abuse, color consciousness, and the vulnerability of children. Read Sula if you want to know how effectively Morrison has written about the betrayal of female friendship and the irresistible allure of a sexual connection. Read Beloved if you want to experience her extraordinary abilities depicting the lasting effects of trauma (slavery in this case) or the essence of community and the power of love. But don’t read this one unless you’re a completist. show less

When Bride is born with significantly darker skin than her parents, she is raised without love. Her mother even insists on being called "Sweetness" rather than any maternal name. When Bride is still young, she falsely testifies against a teacher in "Satanic Panic" type of child abuse case, just so she can get a moment of affection from Sweetness.

As an adult, Bride has become successful in the beauty industry and plans to bring skin care products to the former teacher when she's released from prison as a means of atonement. This causes Bride's current partner Booker Starbern to leave her. The bulk of the book details Bride's meeting with the teacher and her later search for Booker, both of which lead to a great amount of pain and show more suffering for Bride. In flashbacks to their past, we learn that Bride and Booker's experiences with child abuse have arrested their development as adults (in Bride's case this becomes quite literal in a magical realist way). It's a powerful story of learning to deal with the trauma of abuse and racism and finding redemption in relationships with others. show less

Ah, Toni Morrison. She;s deceptively simple, while all the while being terribly complex. I wasn't surprised at the reveal when it came, but I think that in some ways it isn't the crux of the book - at least not in the traditional sense. I loved the exploration of how childhood hurts become us, even if the de-maturing of Bride seemed a little much at times. I often wondered while reading, if the bits and pieces of her that were becoming childlike again were only in her mind, rather than Morrison injecting an element of the supernatural into the work. I think some may argue either way, but I prefer to think of it as merely in Bride's own perception (even if, in some ways it functions as a slightly heavy handed telescoping of the reveal show more that isn't). So why do I like this book after saying that? For the dipping into the human psyche. For the little beautiful moments of the work that turn those childhood horrors into something else (for example, Bride's blue-black skin that her mother hated, that turns out to be Bride's most spectacular feature and part of her ethereal beauty). I loved that even though there were moments of positive closure, that not all the moments of closure were. We're not given the pretty of the fairy tale, only the prequel, and some faint hopes that the next story will be better. And, after all, isn't that what we're all after? Something just a little bit better than what we, ourselves, had? show less

This is a terse read with an even more terse theme: the things we do to children matter. Because children who are raised in pain grow up to be adults in pain, which pain they then pass on to those they love and those who love them.

God help all the children in this book, for all of them have suffered in one way or another. There’s the protagonist, Bride, denied love by her mother because of her black skin. There’s her inamorata Booker, permanently scarred by the death of a beloved brother at the hands of a pedophile. Booker’s aunt Queen has left a trail of abandoned children in her wake, all of whom hate her. And Rain, the only actual child in the book, has fled from a mother who sold her into prostitution. Each of them seeks to show more mend their wounds in dysfunctional or ineffective ways: through sex, through music, through poetry, through sensory stimulation, through betrayal. Morrison’s message is clear – lest you miss it, Morrison hammers the message home at the end of the first, brutal chapter: “But it’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not my fault. It’s not.”

Don’t worry about the plot – it scarcely matters, and Morrison scarcely bothers to justify the story’s many improbabilities or inconsistencies. Besides, who reads Morrison for plot? This novel delivers what Morrison’s novels infallibly deliver: memorable characters, lyrical prose, a little magical realism (for example, Bride’s body literally reverting back to adolescence), a whopping dose of empathy for all the damaged people in the world, and the hope of redemption through love. show less