The quotations given before each question below are only there to guide you; you do not
need to employ them if they are not relevant to your argument. You are encouraged to use
additional textual examples to support your claims.
“The gap between Africa and Afro-America and the gap between the living and the dead
and the gap between the past and the present does not exist. It’s bridged for us by our
assuming responsibility for people no one’s ever assumed responsibility for. They are those
that died en route. Nobody knows their names, and nobody thinks about them. . . . There is
a necessity for remembering the horror, but of course there’s a necessity for remembering
it in a manner in which it can be digested, in a manner in which the memory is not
destructive.”1
“This is not a story to pass on” (324).
Engaging with relevant ideas from the “History” and “Racial Difference” chapters from
Bennett and Royle, answer the following question: What does Beloved suggest about
the responsibility of contemporary readers to remember the history of
American slavery?
