Morrison's seventh novel continues her chronological trilogy of physical migrations among African-American populations after the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery as a sanctioned practice in America.

Although all her narratives, most explicitly Song of Solomon (see especially the story of Macon Dead I and "Lincoln's Heaven") treat the consequences of slavery and its abiding effects on African-American populations, the three most recent novels expound on the metaphor of a journey that responds directly to the heritage of slavery.

In Beloved, a principal theme revolves around the development of a community among ex-slaves in Cincinnati, one haunted by the memory of that community's failure to prevent an attempt to recapture escaped slaves under the Fugitive Slave Law. Even more directly, Jazz treats the quintessential African-American literary theme of the twentieth century, the Great Migration during which descendants of slaves fled the Jim Crow South to seek freedom, dignity...