My Review of Sula by Toni Morrison

Before last year, I had not planned to read this book. I felt I had the novels by Toni Morrison that I was going to read, but seeing this on sale in the used goods store for $1 changed my plans. I used a book club selection of this book on Goodreads this past February (which was a very disappointing affair) as my excuse to read this book and managed to make a reasonable read of it. I'd read The Source of Self-Regard the previous year and had wait until enough time after Morrison's death to pick-up another book by her. I am always a little doubtful of my analysis of this book because of how short it is, but I had Morrison's own words from THoSR to go by and I think I did as best a look of it from my view as I could.

Sula by Toni Morrison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"I began to write my second book, which was called Sula, because of my preoccupation with a picture of a woman and the way in which I heard her name pronounced. Her name was Hannah, and I think she was a friend of my mother's. I don't remember seeing her very much, but what I do remember is the color around her--a kind of violet, a suffusion of something violet--and her eyes, which appeared to be half closed. But what I remember most is how the women said her name: how they said 'Hannah Peace' and smiled to themselves, and there was some secret about her that they knew, which they didn't talk about, at least not in my hearing, but it seemed loaded in the way in which they said her name. And I suspected that she was a little bit of an outlaw but that they approved in some way." - from The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

This is year 6 of the United Nations International Decade for People of African Descent

In The Sweet By and By by the Peerless Quartet - This song is sung in the book by a mysterious character: a near silent drunk who either was really light-skinned or just white depending on which character you asked. But the book says he sung with a very "hill mountain" voice.

What a book, I had not planned on reading this book, but here we are. I have to say that though I knew a little bit about the action that takes place in the pages reading it was an experience that one comes to expect from a Toni Morrison novel. Morrison wrote this book as her examination of how black women related one another and it is also her second novel. The fact that this book was written during the height of the second-wave feminist movement is notable, but this book seems to wooking in parallel to that instead of out of it. She wanted to come-up with a very black-female language or sensibility (though that might be a dangerous word) for the book.

Save A Little Dram for Me by Bert Williams. This song is mentioned directly in the book.

I'm not going to spoil the entire story but here is the set-up. We are, as usual, in a fictional mid-western valley town that is in Ohio close to the Great Lakes. The story is told as one big flashback as we go back to a time when the town was racially segregated with white people living in the valleys and black people cramped up on the hills (like the favelas of Brazil). We get to the proper story with the introduction of a PTSD WWI veteran who ends-up by crazy hap-in-stance in Medallion at the place called "The Bottom" which was actually in the hills because racism (for those who've read Song of Solomon think of "No Mercy" Street). All you need to know about Shaderack is that he is the first character we are properly introduced to and he starts a holiday in The Bottom called National Suicide Day that is celebrated on January 3rd. After this we are slowly introduced to the inhabitants of the town and the two main families we will be reading about the Wright's and then the Peace families.

Wild Women Don't Have the Blues by Ida Cox

The two main characters in this book are Nel Wright the main protagonist of-sorts and her friend and the title character Sula Peace. These two are the yin/yang, blue oni/red oni, sane friend, crazy friend trope in-play....but of course this wouldn't be a Toni Morrison novel if it was all that easy to figure them out. Nel is from a family that were creole prostitutes in New Orleans, but had become reformed conservative Christians in The Bottom. The Peace family meanwhile...well they were the opposite. Sula is the granddaughter of Eva Peace (this book's resident Pilate Dead or Baby Suggs) and daughter of Hannah Peace a friendly, aloof woman...who was a nymphomaniac. This last detail caused problems with the married women of the town.

Your Enemy Cannot Harm You by Rev. E.W. Clayborn

Sula is the kind of character I have not read a lot of recently: an Übermensch. As she comes to define herself in-part 2 of the book, she simply refuses all of the rules and norms of the world she lives in and we spend half the novel seeing the crazy, devastating consequences of this. Because I have read a good share of existential philosophy and remembering Camus' The Stranger I knew how things were going and my feelings about the books second-half is similar to how I felt reading about the cold, otherworldly Meursalt was how I felt reading about Sula. Of course the difference is that The Stranger is a realist work and this is a magical-realist work so the rules are a bit different. In any case, we spend part 1 of the novel world-building, and part 2 watching that world be un-built. The fact is that this book is not about The Bottom or people's reaction to Sula, but how the very not-Übermensch Nel reacts to having a best friend that does not believe in any certainties or truths and how black women learn to forgive each other for stuff. Here is how Morrison describes Sula:

"I always thought of Sula as quintessentially black, metaphysically black, if you will, which is not melanin and certainly not unquestioning fidelity to the tribe. She is New World black and New World woman extracting choice from choicelessness, responding inventively to found things. Improvisational. Daring, disruptive, imaginative, modern, out-of-the-house, outlawed, unpolicing, uncontained, and uncontainable. And dangerously female...A modernity that overturns prewar definitions, ushers in the Jazz Age (an aged defined by Afro-American art and culture), and requires new kinds of intelligences to define oneself."

Man Stealer Blues by Lucille Bogan

In my opinion of the book, I don't know if the forgiveness aspect was as emphasized as Morrison claimed it was, but it was interesting how Sula and the town were affected by each other. As always there was some beautifully poetic words in this book and I always like seeing how magical-realism is manifested in a particular work of fiction and this book did not disappoint. I couldn't help but compare this novel to the one Morrison wrote after it, Song of Solomon. I still like it best of all of Morrison's novels that I have read so far, but Sula is an interesting spiritual predecessor or sibling. Milkman wanted wings, but Sula simply wanted to tread o'er the Earth.

Shall We Gather at the River by The Stillman College Tour Choir. This song was sung (view spoiler)[at Sula's funeral...ironically by the happy townspeople (hide spoiler)].

View all my reviews