Toni Morrison's Nobel Lecture

I'm providing at link to Morrison's speech upon receiving her Nobel Prize in Literature. The speech itself contains many of the themes/motifs present in Beloved, such as an old, wise woman (or was it a man?), silence, and cultural struggle/alienation. Worth taking a look at to give you some context for Mortison writing Beloved. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/morrison-lecture.html