Sula

Sula is a slim book and not only my favorite Toni Morrison novel, but one of my favorite novels. Although set in Ohio, Sula reveals more about American history and American Southern history than most historical tomes. 

“What was taken by outsiders to be slackness, slovenliness or even generosity was in fact a full recognition of the legitimacy of forces other than good ones. They did not believe doctors could heal—for them, none ever had done so. They did not believe death was accidental—life might be, but death was deliberate....”

Sula, a singular character in a singular novel by a… show more.

I first read Sula for a college English class and remember the discussions of the book, often centering on the likeability of the title character. This annoyed me greatly because so much of the novel is about how being liked has so little to do with who you are or how you treat others. Sula figures this out very early in life, and she uses that awareness to wreak havoc on her gossipy and superstitious town. Lots of revenge tales traffic in spectacular reversals and gratuitous body counts, but Sula’s vengeance takes the form of sustained indifference to other people’s… show more.

No other novel is more important to me than this one. A college professor introduced it to me in my sophomore year and, as the third Toni Morrison book I’d read, it just spoke to me in a way no other book has before or since. Sula and Nel grow up in Depression-era Ohio, but limitations on black people’s and women’s lives necessitate their different paths: Sula goes rogue to the big Ohio city while Nel succeeds as a housewife in their all-Black birthplace known as “The Bottom.” You would never know an approximately 150-page book could deliver so much… show more.

Morrison taps into Faulkner’s gorgeously perverse relationship with Sigmund Freud. Her characters seem post-moral, driven by instinct, fundamental desire, and a willingness to tread in the liminal spaces of society where few will follow. The story is a Southern gothic fairytale about two girls whose lives are inescapably entangled against the backdrop of a town obsessed with suicide, violence, and sexual calamity. This book makes you feel lost in the woods—like an abandoned child from a tale by the Brothers Grimm.