My favorite new read in 2025 has been Kaveh Akbar’s Martyr! ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

It's easier to forget her, to look away, to seek solace in her nameless anonymity and mythologized fish hair than to truly consider Beloved and "Sixty Million and more" that may have liked sweet things and crawling up stairs and stories and earrings and their mom's attention and... #BelovedFebruary

The last chapter is as elusive as Beloved herself. The repetition of "It was not a story to pass on," combined with the last lines, which achingly maintain that any signs of her are "Just weather. Certainly no clamor for a kiss," leave us with one thought: "Beloved." #BelovedFebruary

Baby Suggs preached that in the face of anti-Black racism and violence, "YOU got to love it [their hands, mouth, flesh, "beat and beating heart"], YOU!" But this radical, liberating self-love is most possible when you have a community to lean on and "a friend of your mind." #BelovedFebruary

This chapter makes me ugly cry every time. Paul D sees Sethe at her lowest, resigned to die like Baby Suggs before her, and doesn't feel sorry for her. Instead, he sees her: her strength, generosity, compassion. And he holds up a mirror. "You your best thing, Sethe. You are." #BelovedFebruary

The girl who used to only like the stories about herself now faces her fears to protect others. Her courage to reach out and ask for help sets the stage for the chapter's climactic scene: a parallel to a previous event—except this time, the community does not look away. So good. #BelovedFebruary

But Denver bravely acts! Knowing that there's no defense against the horrors of the world—particularly those caused by whites—Denver imagines Baby Suggs telling her, "Know it, and go on out the yard. Go on," advice about perseverance that echoes Stamp Paid's "All he can." #BelovedFebruary

Wasted away and (as Denver astutely observes) not wanting "forgiveness given; she wanted it refused," Sethe is described as a "ragdoll," echoing the term Paul D used to deride himself when under Beloved's power. The ghosts of their pasts have left them powerless and inactive. #BelovedFeburary

How could any series of short remarks do honor to this chapter? Phenomenal. Denver stepping out into the world and the community stepping up for Sethe are everything. #BelovedFebruary

Part I's lines "Anything dead coming back to life hurts" and "Can't nothing heal without pain, you know" establish some hope, even now. Paul's distance from 124 widens the lens of our study to more on Stamp, Ella, Judith. What would it mean for them all to heal? Come back to life? #BelovedFebruary

Sixo's exuberance at his and the Thirty-Mile Woman's heading-towards-freedom secret and Paul D's attempt to empower himself through fatherhood isn't just about sexual virility. Like Sethe's view of motherhood, it deliberately works to restore what enslavers have stolen. #BelovedFebruary

In contrast, Sixo, whom Paul D clearly admires for his tenacity (previously he remarked, "Now THAT was a man") laughs in his final moments, triumphantly exclaiming "Seven-O!" (Last time we witnessed Paul D deride his own manhood, he proposed getting Sethe pregnant.) #BelovedFebruary

And the lack of power and feelings of emasculation pervade Paul D's thoughts, as he repeats his dismay that Beloved "moved him. From room to room. Like a rag doll," is further objectified when he "discovers his worth," and is embarrassed and immobilized by "the neck jewelry." #BelovedFebruary

Whatever form slavery took—whether "Garner's kind" that posed as benign and respectful or the cruel and humiliating form of schoolteacher's—a system that treats people as chattel to be directed and defined by other people is made to erode selfhood of those who are enslaved. #BelovedFebruary

Paul D's memories circle back to his manhood and self-worth, using the metaphor "they clipped him" and suggesting "schoolteacher broke into children what Garner had raised into men," before questioning the idea of Garner so defining him: "Did a whiteman saying it make it so?" #BelovedFebruary

Despite Paul D's rejection of Sethe and Sethe's refashioning of the three shadows to suit her current hopes, the novel won't let readers dismiss Paul D. A good thing too because this chapter revisits two threads—his view of his manhood and family—in such moving ways. #BelovedFebruary

I also associated the man with Halle. The lines that did it for me were "his mouth smells sweet but his eyes are locked" and "there is no breath coming from his mouth and the place where breath should be is sweet smelling the others do not know he is dead," which suggested Halle and the butter.

In my book's preface, Morrison writes, "In trying to make the slave experience intimate... the herculean effort to forget would be threatened by the memory desperate to stay alive." Beloved is desperate to stay alive, to join. She remains present tense. She cannot be forgotten. #BelovedFebruary

This chapter is as evocative as it is elusive. The lack of full stops and present tense—"All of it is now it is always now"—reminds me of Sethe's view of time and Sweet Home: "Some things just stay... the picture of what I did, or knew, or saw is still out there." #BelovedFebruary