“God Help the Child” by Toni Morrison – To Raise a Life

The idea that parents shape their children and are to some extent responsible for how they turn out is older than time itself, a common truth that has been observed through and through, needing no review and leaving little doubt in anyone's mind of its truth.

Nevertheless, properly raising a child is much easier said than done and countless people forget that what they do their children will continue to matter for the rest of their lives.

In God Help the Child, Toni Morrison explores that idea with the power of literature through the story of a dark-skinned young woman named Bride who found herself rejected by her own light-skinned mother. Though this turn of events led Bride to become an independent, rather capable and successful person, it also deprived her from experiencing the most basic forms of human kindness and love.

Feeling incomplete, she embarks on a curious journey in search for some form of inner peace, love and a way to burst out of her cocoon where her emotional growth came to a halt.

She comes across a number of characters holding different teachings for her, including a man named Booker she falls in love with, her own mother ironically-named Sweetness, and a strange little white girl with whom she holds a bizarre connection.

This is the first book by Toni Morrison to be set in the present day; though some feared that it would hinder her elegant and descriptive prose, it only allowed it to flourish even further.

Morrison always had a great talent for describing enthralling pieces of scenery and delving deep into the inner workings of her characters, two things we are treated to abundantly in this novel.  Basically, this book can be described as a series of short stories, all interconnected and told from the point of view of multiple protagonists.

In the end, the whole thing becomes a relatively complex meditation on family relationships, racism, the power a parent holds over a child's future, and the need to move forward once there is no way to repair the past.

Story-wise, I have to say that there are certain weak points here and there, passages that feel as if they have little use other than to jerk tears out of the readers. Morrison has never been one to pull punches when it comes to describing her characters' suffering and inner darkness, but in my opinion this already short novel could have done with a bit less sentimentality.

Other than that though, the story is well-constructed with no glaring holes, moves along relatively quickly and manages to feel consistently fresh due to the changing perspectives.

Don't expect this book to make you feel like you're sitting on pins and needles though; it is more of a character-driven reflection on certain aspects of life, including the ones mentioned above.

And so, in conclusion it can be safely said that Toni Morrison can, and perhaps even should seek to venture beyond her comfort zone, for it is evident that her talents are just as present in this first time she ventured beyond the story setting she has become accustomed to.

God Help the Girl is ultimately a profound and touching reflection on the many dynamics and relationships that can arise in a dysfunctional family, and in the child resulting from it.

If you are into slower stories that are driven by the characters and their search for meaning, you'll most certainly enjoy this book.

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Toni Morrison Toni Morrison (born as Chloe Ardelia Wofford) is an American novelist and professor whose novels have been making waves in the community for quite some time now for their epic nature and the completeness with which everything in them is developed, with some of her more noteworthy efforts including The Bluest Eye and Song of Solomon. She was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988, a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2012.