God Help the Child

by Toni Morrison

Overview

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book • This fiery and provocative novel from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult.

At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love. There is Booker, the man Bride loves, and loses to anger. Rain, the mysterious white child with whom she crosses paths. And finally, Bride’s mother herself, Sweetness, who takes a lifetime to come to understand that “what you do to children matters. And they might never forget.”        

“Powerful.... A tale that is as forceful as it is affecting, as fierce as it is resonant.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804194822
Publisher:	Diversified Publishing
Publication date:	04/21/2015
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Toni Morrison is the author of eleven novels, from The Bluest Eye (1970) to God Help the Child (2015). She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. She died in 2019.

Hometown:

Princeton, New Jersey, and Manhattan

Date of Birth:

February 18, 1931

Date of Death:

August 5, 2019

Place of Birth:

Lorain, Ohio

Place of Death:

New York

Education:

Howard University, B.A. in English, 1953; Cornell, M.A., 1955

Read an Excerpt

Sweetness
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "God Help the Child"
by .
Copyright © 2015 Toni Morrison.
Excerpted by permission of Diversified Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Reading Group Guide

The questions and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of God Help the Child.

1. Morrison opens God Help the Child with a character insisting, “It’s not my fault. So you can’t blame me.” How does this set up what follows?

2. Multiple themes weave through the novel: childhood trauma, racism, skin color, social class, freedom. What would you say is the primary theme, and why?

3. Kirkus Reviews said of the book, “As in the darkest fairy tales, there will be fire and death.” In what other ways is God Help the Child like a fairy tale?

4. Over the course of an otherwise realistic novel, Bride’s body reverts from a curvy woman to an undeveloped girl. What’s going on there?

5. Several of the primary characters have different names from the ones they received at birth: Bride, Sweetness, Rain. What do these new names tell us about the characters?

6. At different points in the novel, Morrison switches from individual characters’ voices to third-person narration. How does this affect the reader’s understanding of what’s happening?

7. Why is Bride so uninterested in digging below the surface with Booker?

8. Discuss Bride’s friendship with Brooklyn. Over and over, Bride says how much she trusts Brooklyn, and what a good friend she is. What do these assertions tell us about Bride’s character? Does it matter that Brooklyn is white and wears dreadlocks?

9. For as much as Sweetness hated Bride’s skin color, Bride turned it into an asset—as Jeri says on page 36, “Black sells. It’s the hottest commodity in the civilized world.” What changed from the time Bride was born until now? Have things really changed, or changed only on the surface?

10. Bride testified against Sofia to please her mother. On page 42 Sweetness recalls, “After Lula Ann’s performance in that court and on the stand I was so proud of her, we walked the streets hand in hand.” Why did Sweetness care so much about this trial?

11. On page 56, after Bride tells Booker about what she witnessed her landlord doing when she was a child, he says, “Correct what you can; learn from what you can’t. . . No matter how hard we try to ignore it, the mind always knows truth and wants clarity.” What does he mean by that?

12. The reader’s understanding of Booker is shaped by Bride’s recollection of his saying, “You not the woman I want,” her limited insights about him, and Brooklyn’s descriptions of him as a shady character. But in Part III we learn that he’s quite different from what we’ve imagined. What point is Morrison making here?

13. Bride holds on to Booker’s shaving brush, and Sofia keeps Bride’s earring. Why are these tokens important?

14. When Bride is taken in by the white hippies, she is cut off from the world for weeks. How does this change her?

15. Why does Rain form such a special bond with Bride?

16. How did Adam’s death change Booker? Why did it affect him more than the rest of his family?

17. Discuss Bride’s sojourn with Queen. How does their relationship develop so quickly?

18. Although Queen has had many children, she has no close contact with any of them. What does this tell us about her? Why is she still a sympathetic character?

19. After Bride reads Booker’s writing about her, how does it change her impression of him?

20. What does it symbolize when Booker throws his trumpet into the stream with Queen’s ashes?

21. On page 180, Morrison describes Bride and Booker’s thoughts about the future: “A child. New life. Immune to evil or illness, protected from kidnap, beatings, rape, racism, insult, hurt, self-loathing, abandonment. Error-free. All goodness. Minus wrath. So they believe.” What do those last three words mean?

22. The novel begins and ends with Sweetness. Why do you think this is?

23. Nearly every main character has had a brush with child sexual abuse. What is the cumulative effect?

24. In an interview with Stephen Colbert, Morrison said: “There is no such thing as race. . . . Racism is a construct, a social construct. And it has benefits. Money can be made off of it. People who don’t like themselves can feel better because of it. It can describe certain kinds of behavior that are wrong or misleading. So [racism] has a social function. But race can only be defined as a human being.” In the novel, Booker says similar things. Sweetness raised Bride the way she did because of Bride’s dark skin. How does this all tie together?

Editorial Reviews

…slim but powerful…This novel does not aspire to the grand sweep of history in Ms. Morrison's dazzling 1987 masterpiece, Beloved, but like Home (2012), it attests to her ability to write intensely felt chamber pieces that inhabit a twilight world between fable and realism, and to convey the desperate yearnings of her characters for safety and love and belonging. The scars inflicted on Bride and Booker by their childhoods are metaphors of sorts for the calamities of history and the hold they can exert over a country's or a people's dreams…Writing with gathering speed and assurance as the book progresses, Ms. Morrison works her narrative magic, turning the Ballad of Bride and Booker into a tale that is as forceful as it is affecting, as fierce as it is resonant.

The New York Times - Michiko Kakutani

★ 12/22/2014
In Morrison's short, emotionally-wrenching novel, her first since 2012's Home, a mother learns about the damage adults do to children and the choices children make as they grow to suppress, express, or overcome their shame. The story begins with the birth of Lula Ann Bridewell, a midnight black baby whose mother cannot stand to touch her. Grown-up Lula Ann transforms herself into Bride, a stiletto-wearing, Jaguar-driving California executive with dark skin proudly accentuated by stylish white clothing. Amid preparations for the launch of her signature cosmetics line, Bride offers a gift-bag of cash and cosmetics to parolee Sofia Huxley, the kindergarten teacher Bride accused of sexual abuse 15 years before, earning Bride maternal approval and Sofia her prison sentence. Sofia's angry rejection of Bride's present, coinciding with the departure of Bride's lover, inspires such self-doubt that Bride fears regressing back into Lula Ann. A car accident lands her in a culvert, where a little girl keeping dark secrets of her own comes to the rescue. Nobel laureate Morrison explores characteristic themes of people held captive by inner struggles; the delusion of racism; violence and redemption. Her literary craftsmanship endures with sparse language, precise imagery, and even humor. This haunting novel displays a profound understanding of American culture and an unwavering sense of justice and forgiveness. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

One of the Best Books of the Year: San Francisco Chronicle, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kansas City Star

“Powerful. . . . A tale that is as forceful as it is affecting, as fierce as it is resonant.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“A tragicomic jazz opera played out in four parts. . . . Morrison makes art from the cadences of human heartbreak.” —The Atlantic

“Beautiful. . . . God Help the Child is superb, its story gliding along the tracks of Morrison’s utterly assured prose.” —USA Today

“Unflinching, gorgeously written.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Magnificent. . . . Morrison remains an incredibly powerful writer who commands attention no matter the story she is telling.” —The Guardian (London)

“Sly, savage, honest, and elegant. . . . Once again, Morrison thrillingly brings the storytelling moxie and mojo that make her, arguably, our greatest living novelist.” —Elle

“Exquisite. . . . Morrison has a Shakespearean sense of tragedy, and that gift imbues God Help the Child.” —Newsday

“The Nobel Prize winner continues to create beauty from the anger and defining wounds of her characters. . . . Bears a lifetime’s worth of anger and sorrow, distilled to their essences and fiercely hung onto, tooth and claw.” —The Christian Science Monitor

“Glorious and incendiary.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“There is a new urgency to Morrison’s work, a desire to tell the story itself, without embellishment or ornamentation. . . . Morrison [is] the undisputed interpreter of the American black experience.” —The Boston Globe

“Morrison gives us an unflinching look at the wounds that adults can inflict on children with life-altering consequences. . . . Few authors can deliver exquisitely written prose as Morrison.” —Essence.com

“Haunting. . . . Moving. . . . Fearless. . . . God Help the Child yet again proves that Toni Morrison is an icon.” —Bustle

“Both timely and timeless. . . . A pleasure. . . . As she shows with such brevity and eloquence in God Help the Child, having and healing don’t necessarily happen at the same time.” —The Seattle Times

“A book to be read twice at a minimum—the first time for the story, and the second time to savor the language, the gems of phrasing and the uncomfortable revelations about the human capacity both to love and destroy.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Breathtaking prose. . . . A new Morrison book is always cause for celebration.” —The Dallas Morning News

“We have stepped into, once again, another of Morrison’s fertile landscapes. . . . It is a blessing that she still speaks with such salvific force and poetic grace.” —The Plain Dealer

“Heartbreaking. . . . [Morrison] continues to dazzle. . . . Morrison—like Bride—is still reinventing herself as a writer. And just getting better.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

From the Publisher

★ 03/15/2015
In her latest book, Nobel laureate Morrison shows us how we hold onto our pain and let it define us, pulling back on her often liquidly lyric style to offer powerful portraits in lean prose. Sweetness, who is from a family whose members can pass for white, gives birth to the midnight-black Lula Ann and raises her at an ashamed and bitter distance, which she rationalizes will toughen her up. As a child, Lula Ann gains some favor from her mother by helping to put away a teacher named Sofia, who is accused of sexually abusing her charges. As an adult who renames herself Bride, Lula Ann becomes a successful, traffic-stoppingly beautiful career woman. But her life starts falling apart when she meets with a just-paroled Sofia. Then Booker, with whom she's been conducting a passionate affair, leaves without explanation. Serious-minded Booker cannot leave behind a terrible family tragedy, and as Bride pursues him for answers to his abandonment, they are both transformed in more ways than one. VERDICT There are some moves here that may seem obvious, but the pieces all fit together seamlessly in a story about beating back the past, confronting the present, and understanding one's worth. [See Prepub Alert, 11/17/14.]—Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Library Journal

Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison narrates a melancholy story of interconnected characters who remain impacted by their difficult childhood experiences. Taking her time with her delivery, Morrison keeps to a pace and tone that suggest aging wisdom and lack of judgment—even as some of her characters act out their anxieties and impulsivity. She differentiates characters by changing her vocal tone and resonance—as when Queen says to the uniquely beautiful Bride, “You look like something a raccoon found and refused to eat.” Such a telling line in the unraveling messiness of childhood traumas! T.E.C. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2015 - AudioFile

★ 2015-01-07
Brutality, racism and lies are relieved by moments of connection in Morrison's latest.A little girl is born with skin so black her mother will not touch her. Desperate for approval, to just once have her mother take her hand, she tells a lie that puts an innocent schoolteacher in jail for decades. Later, the ebony-skinned girl will change her name to Bride, wear only white, become a cosmetics entrepreneur, drive a Jaguar. Her lover, a man named Booker, also bears a deep scar on his soul—his older brother was abducted, tortured and murdered by a pedophilic serial killer. This is a skinny, fast-moving novel filled with tragic incidents, most sketched in a few haunting sentences: "The last time Booker saw Adam he was skateboarding down the sidewalk in twilight, his yellow T-shirt fluorescent under the Northern Ash trees." When Bride's falsely accused teacher is released from prison, there's a new round of trouble. Booker leaves, Bride goes after him—and ends up in the woods, recovering from a car accident with hippie survivalists who have adopted a young girl abused by her prostitute mother. Meanwhile, Bride is anxiously watching her own body metamorphose into that of a child—her pubic hair has vanished, her chest has flattened, her earlobes are smooth. As in the darkest fairy tales, there will be fire and death. There will also be lobster salad, Smartwater and Louis Vuitton; the mythic aspects of this novel are balanced by moments like the one in which Bride decides that the song that most represents her relationship with Booker is "I Wanna Dance with Somebody." A chilling oracle and a lively storyteller, Nobel winner Morrison continues the work she began 45 years ago with The Bluest Eye.

Kirkus Reviews