The Borrowed Words of Ivanka Trump

Beloved, Toni Morrison’s 1987 novel, tells the story of Sethe, a woman who was born into slavery and who escaped her plantation—only to be, a mere month after she found freedom, re-captured. Before she was returned, Sethe, rather than subject her 2-year-old daughter to the horrors that awaited them, paid the girl the only mercy she could: She killed her. Years later and, now, “free” once again, Sethe is haunted—by her daughter, by her history, by the history that is all of America’s to bear—and by the general fact that freedom is, in this country, a deeply relative proposition.

Ivanka Trump quotes in , her new book on Rewriting the Rules for Success. Its title is adapted from a tagline that was and that has lived most of its life as for the Ivanka Trump brand of clothing, jewelry, and, most recently, feminism. The book makes liberal use of inspirational quotes, comes as a preface to ’s chapter on Working Smarter, Not Harder. “Bit by bit … she had claimed herself,” writes the one author, quoting the other. “Freeing yourself was one thing: claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”