SOURCE: Capuano, Peter J. “Truth in Timbre: Morrison's Extension of Slave Narrative Song in Beloved.” African American Review 37, no. 1 (spring 2003): 95-103.

In the following essay, Capuano examines references to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), by Frederick Douglass, in Morrison's Beloved.

His voice was faint. A rustle of leaves. Then Reb lifted his head and began to croon in a tongue incomprehensible to me. Another mourner began to sing. Then another. The sound swelled, expanded, ate space, filled the woods like a splash of wind, blended with the air, turned and touched off, one by one, the different voices of the others, then Reb sang louder—or, better, bellowed like a steer. Abruptly, they stopped, my own face was hot and thick, the tears flew back into my nose when I sniffled and burned my throat. It was then, as Reb drove home the...