Tag Archives: Beloved

Ivanka Doesn’t Understand “Beloved”

By Robin Bates | Published: May 10, 2017

When Ivanka Trump quotes Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” in her recent book, she does everything I tell my students not to: she reduces the work to herself.

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Let Our Teachers Teach

By Robin Bates | Published: April 17, 2016

Monday When I wrote last week about a Virginia legislator attacking teachers for assigning Toni Morrison’s Beloved, I didn’t realize that there was a mother in an adjoining county also going after the book. And unlike the Virginia legislator she gives reasons. Here’s from The Post’s article about Laura Murphy, a Fairfax County mother whose son […]

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A Virginia Legislator Attacks Beloved

By Robin Bates | Published: April 13, 2016

A Virginia representative has attacked the teaching of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” calling the novel “moral sewage.” Given the man’s views on spousal rape and abortion, i think I know what scene in the book set him off.

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Obama’s Eulogy & Beloved’s Baby Suggs

By Robin Bates | Published: July 3, 2015

Commentator Melissa Harris-Perry quoted from “Beloved” following Obama’s Charleston eulogy. The passage she chose helps explain the power of the speech.

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Literature as an Ethics Laboratory

By Robin Bates | Published: March 14, 2014

Literature helps us explore what it means to be an ethical being.

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Shadow Projections on the President

By Robin Bates | Published: September 18, 2009

A couple of months ago I wondered on this blog whether some of the vitriolic attacks on Obama (as distinguished from reasoned disagreement) were driven by racism, and now I see that others are wondering the same, including Maureen Dowd and Jimmy Carter.  But a reader of Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish has a more […]

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