A short excerpt from Morrison’s novel God Help the Child on motherhood, prejudice, racism and discrimination. This short story elaborates on a mother and her difficulties raising a black child: How she thought she needed to be strict with her daughter and how this past behavior still keeps them estranged until the present day – when the mother is already being cared for in a nursing home: “I wasn’t a bad mother, you have to know that, but I may have done some hurtful things to my only child because I had to protect her. Had to. All because of skin privileges.”

Short fiction · United States · 2015