It goes without saying that every reader has his or her own fascination with a book, a writer and sometimes a genre.
I believe that the works of literature we usually like are those that hold a mirror up to our inner selves; the ones that stir up hidden aspirations in us and speak to the deepest recesses of our minds.
They go deep into ourselves and open our minds to facts that we barely know about ourselves until we stumble across them while reading about a character that has the same fears, passions, insecurities and aspirations like ourselves.
It starts by a feeling that you inexplicably like this piece of writing and would like to read it over, then given much thought you realize the reason you like it.
Now lest my article gets so unbearably personal, I am not going to reveal the exact episodes that I relate to from Beloved or Tar baby or Song of Solomon.
So here are the most general reasons why I like Morrison's novels so far.
To begin with, there's the strong female voice in her novels that inspires every broken woman to go on with her life.
The female characters in her novels suffer twice, one as bearers of Afro-American culture and another at the hands of the black man; yet they survive hardships and emerge with stories to tell.
They actually bear the responsibility of keeping the African-American culture going.
It is the way Morrison mixes up the national and the personal that makes her novels irresistibly interesting to me; and more important, women are the point of intersection.
Everything revolves around them and is in some way or another connected with them.
By making them a point of reference, Morrison craftily emphasizes women status as an independent and strong beings that influence rather than are influenced by the status quo.
More important, her novels narrate a move from innocence to experience.
Jadine, the protagonist of Tar Baby, sacrifices her happiness with the one man she's ever loved for the sake of her freedom and independence.
She got confused at some point of her life, and was ready to throw her life and dreams away for him.
However, later she chooses her freedom and dumps him.
At the end of the novel, there's an episode of her, that I madly in love with, sitting in the airport; happy, beautiful, free and independent and has refused to break in the grip of any masculine hand.
Finally, her novels are sad in an inspiring way.
It is weird when you think of it but it is the sad things that usually inspire and get us thinking.
Morrison presents the other side of the story.
That of women who wrap up all their future happiness in one man and all their world falls apart if he didn't turn out as charming as they thought he is.
In Song of Solomon, Hagar couldn't put up with the fact that Macon is no longer interested in her and commits suicide.
She presents the weak feminine side in a provocative way that makes every female wants to throw the man she's got on hand to the abyss.
It is not that I am anti-men or something.
The truth is, I only like to see women living freely, pursuing their dreams and are being treated as an essence not a frame.
Different readers read from their own perspectives and get themselves mixed up with the piece of literature they're reading.
The moment a piece of writing is published, it no longer is the property of the writer; it belongs to the reader and it's for him to decide what to make out of it.
The reason I like it is that I am many times a kind of vulnerable and fragile girl who expects things to work out after dropping a couple of tears.
But this is only one side of me.
Morrison's novels shake the strong person in me, and make me feel my essential strength.
Whenever I feel down, I just sit and read my worries away; it works with me like magic.
And by the end of this week I will read Sula and the bluest eye.