In her 1987 novel Beloved, Toni Morrison explores the complexities of slave life and its influence on motherhood and family interaction. Morrison uses aspects of the 1845 Autobiography of Frederick Douglass to create his account of slavery, but that is where the similarities end. Beloved is a neo-slave narrative and, like other neo-slave narratives, attempts to “tear the veil drawn over proceedings too terrible to tell” (Morrison, XV-XIX). New slave narratives expose what writers of slave narratives could not represent or wanted to forget. Slave fiction is a literary genre that sought to abolish slavery while neo-slavery narratives seek to reconcile with the past. The account of the life of Frederick Douglass and the neo-slave story Beloved are two pieces of literary works that are an integral part of African American literature. Both books are similar in terms of subject matter, but serve two very different and distinct purposes. The narrative of Frederick Douglass' life was written to serve as a catalyst for change. Douglass wrote his life autobiography to convince people that the abolition of slavery was necessary. On the other hand, Beloved is a memorial to slavery and those who endured it. Even though both books deal with similar conflicts such as family destruction, death, and violence, Beloved does something that The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass is unable to do. It deeply analyzes the intra-racial and inter-racial interaction between individuals in antebellum America. Unlike Frederick Douglass, Toni Morrison is not bound by the society in which she lives. As a runaway slave, Douglass is aware and cautious of her white audience. His writing is committed to appeasing white society. ...... half of the paper ...... argument that the only way to recover from the trauma of slavery is to remember and understand it. ''There is a need to remember the horror, but obviously there is a need to remember it in a way in which it can be digested, in a way in which the memory is not destructive. The act of writing the book, in a certain sense, is a way of dealing with it and making memory possible'' (Morrison). Works CitedAndrews, William L. "Slave Narratives: An Introduction to the Slave Narrative." Documenting the American South homepage. Np, nd Web. June 23, 2013. Douglass, Federico. United States: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Print.Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Vintage Books, 2004. Print.Morrison, Toni. Introduction. Beloved (XV-XIX). United States: Vintage Books. Walters, Delores. "Margaret Garner." Np, nd Web. June 10 2013.