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Rating:  -
Written in 1973, Toni Morrison's second novel explores themes of life, love, sex, and death, contrasting Sula Peace and Nel Wright, best friends from childhood who grow up to lead totally different adult lives. Living in the Bottom, an ironically named, poverty-stricken black community in the hills of Medallion, Ohio, Sula and Nel, opposites in personality, share their thoughts, feelings, and secrets, some of them of life-and-death importance. Part of a family with a long history of violence, Sula believes she owes nothing to anyone except herself, while Nel's strict mother imposes limits and insists on her adherence to social values.
Though Sula eventually escapes the Bottom in the 1920s to attend college and travel from Georgia to California, Michigan to Louisiana, she always does what is expedient, having no real values or ambitions, other than her own pleasure. When Sula returns to the Bottom in 1937, the stable Nel is a wife and mother trying to keep her family fed and clothed, a woman who no longer has anything in common with Sula, though she becomes Sula's innocent victim. Morrison develops Sula's character through her dysfunctional relationships and selfish actions, showing her connections to her family's past but never blaming it for her later abhorrent behavior.
The novel is a series of cycles and follows a circular structure, opening in 1965, as whites decide they want the Bottom land for golf courses and hilltop views and the blacks who have always lived there move to the valley with its more fertile land. The cyclical nature of life is also borne out in the lives of the characters, especially that of Sula, who escapes Bottom but returns inevitably to the community of her mother and grandmother. Racial segregation, accepted as a given, underlies all facets of the novel, but Morrison focuses on character here, avoiding polemics and creating a novel which manages to be tough but often darkly humorous, emotionally sensitive but often brutal, compassionate but realistic about human nature.
Rich with imagery and symbolism, the novel is also accessible and involving. Morrison creates characters with whom the reader identifies, even in Sula, who is a less than sympathetic protagonist; Shadrack, the shell-shocked war veteran who opens and closes the novel, wrings the heart even as he lives a life of absurdity. Filled with irony, intricate in structure, and well-developed in its themes, Sula is less complex than some of Morrison's later novels, but satisfying in its vividly drawn view of a struggling black community unified in its poverty. n Mary Whipple
Song of Solomon
Beloved
JazzThe Fiction Of Toni Morrison: Reading and Writing on Race, Culture, and IdentityConversations With Toni Morrison (Literary Conversations Series)
Rating:  -
I loved this book. It was quite a page-turner. I'm a big fan of Toni Morrison and this book did not disappoint. I highly recommend it.
Rating: -
I was assigned "Sula" by Toni Morrison as part of the requirements for my Literature by Women class. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book. Morrison is quite descriptive of her characters that are so colorful that is very easy to imagine them in your mind; almost as vivid as watching the scenes live.
The book is about several different people and it was quite a change from others styles of writing, how Morrison transitioned over time from one character to the next. The two main characters are two black females, Nel and Sula. The book travels through their lives from before they were born to after one of their deaths. Along the path we meet many different characters, family and friends, who live in their community of the Bottoms located near Medallion, Ohio.
The book begins in the late 1800's and continues until the 1960's. It begins just as slavery ends and ends in the midst of the civil rights movement. However the book does not go into detail about these topics it centers more on the daily lives of the people in this community and their relationships, whether it is friendships, courtships or family relationships.
We also learn just how different two young black women can be and still become the best of friends and even through adversity come back to each other and take care of one another when no one else will. We also learn that there is very little that the mothers in this book would not do for their children, up to including homicide to protect them, sometimes even from themselves.
I definitely recommend this book to any adult reader (It is not suitable for the young as it does include violence and sexual content). This definitely will encourage me to read other Toni Morrison topics.
Rating:  -
**contains some spoilers**
I wrote this literary for an English paper, which is why it's so long:
Literary Critique of "Sula"
Toni Morrison's "Sula" takes the reader on a turbulent ride of vague themes and inconsequential plot lines. But while there is much to be admonished in "Sula", there are a number of redeeming aspects; unfortunately the sum of these aspects do not come close to bringing salvation. Changing character focus and molding of a main character without the courtesy of proper exposition leave the reader of "Sula" feeling confused and cheated. By analyzing Toni Morrison's failings in the areas of character utilization, appealing plot, and general readability a greater appreciation for better written works can be had.
Toni Morrison's "Sula" is the story of a small close knit African American community set in Ohio in the early to mid 1900's. The hill top community known as the "Bottom" is the exhibit of many compelling characters and subject of trials and omens. The reader is introduced to the bottom at the end of it's existence and is then lead through time, on a journey to discover the late heart and soul of this community. The people in Sula include the crazy, the dying, the surviving, and the stones. The main characters, Sula Peace and Nel Wright, are the eventual focus of the story, but several supporting characters pervade throughout the novel.
"Sula" begins with an apt introduction of character and setting. Shadrack, Helene Wright, Eva and Hanna Peace, all key supporting characters, are all given a grand entrance into the story. The stories of Shadrack, Helene Wright, Eva and Hanna Peace are one of the redeeming qualities of "Sula". These characters serve as clues to the personalities and sentiments of the town and main characters, Nel and Sula. You learn about these characters; their struggles, their triumphs, and their growth. But, after spending nearly one third of the novel identifying with these supporting characters, you are taken to the relatively unspectacular world of two pubescent girls. This abrupt transition of character focus resulted in a dramatic loss of depth which the novel had enveloped you in. Dominant characters are downsized to the role of lack luster exposition for Sula and Nel. And a loss is had for the readers interest in the supporting characters who, for the most part, have told their story in it's entirety.
In the story of Eva Peace we learn of her struggle to keep her family alive and fed; a story which relates more to Hanna Peace than it does to Sula Peace or Nel Wright, and only vaguely to the development of Sula's personality by showing the type of people Sula was raised by. And when set into focus a second time, Eva's only contribution to the tale of Sula's main characters is granting the reader knowledge of Sula's emotional detachment. While this information is important to convey to the reader it is done via a very obtrusive and elaborate method in which, foreshadowed by a series of omens and dreams, Hanna Peace, Sula's mother, died. Such disjointed attempts at story progression and ultimately inconsequential plot lines plague "Sula".
In the story of Helene Wright, Morrison describes an incident on a train in which Helene is chastised and affected so deeply she resolves never to be made to feel a certain way again,
It was on that train , shuffling toward Cincinnati, that she resolved to be on guard--always. She wanted to make certain that no man ever looked at her that way. That no midnight eyes or marbled flesh would ever accost her and turn her to jelly. (Sula 22)
This rousing resolution begged for a revisiting by either Helene or her daughter Nel, but none ever came, again leaving the reader with no reason to maintain an interest.
By altering the story to rely more and more on the stories of Sula and Nel Morrison puts great pressure on the ability of these two girls to carry the strength of the story to it's conclusion, a pressure that buckled the initially strong stirrups of this story after some poor character development was relied on.
Sula takes the essence of her mother's neglect and promiscuity, her own emotional detachment, and he grand mother's willingness to go to extremes to get what she needs and returns to the Bottom as a person containing all those elements. Morrison provides no description of how this character was molded into the woman she returned as, she only provided the ingredients for the mold. This left the entirety of Sula's progression to adulthood as an unknown; something open to the imagination of the reader which was a critical flaw because it gave the impression that this progression was not important enough to describe. This combined with aforementioned disharmonies of the story made reading "Sula" a hurdling exercise in that the reader was made to fill in the gaps.
The final hurdle one must over come when reading "Sula" is deciphering the some of various meanings and symbolisms used throughout Sula which are made more apparent by the final words of the narrator.
In the end Toni Morrison's "Sula" fails to deliver on a complete and fulfilling novel. The combination of unharmonious story telling, ultimately irrelevant exposition, and uninspired use of otherwise fantastic characters served to squelch any remnants of affection left for this novel from its initial success.
Rating: -
You know, I read daily, and I adore a wide variety of genres and styles. I began this book with an optimistic interest. Unfortunately, in the end, I found this book to be a bitter disappointment.
The book started very promisingly, with Ms. Morrison breathing a vivid life into her characters and her town. I was immediately invested in these characters; identifying with their emotions and their lives. However, I did find the writing to be extremely disjointed in some areas, which left me with a vague sense of dissatisfaction. As the book progressed, this disjointed style grew, as did my sense of dissatisfaction.
At some point, my initial interest and joy, turned into a sense of obligation. I never start a book without finishing it. Unfortunately, finishing this book became a chore. I grew more and more annoyed with Ms. Morrison's odd style of writing -- and the near-cliche oddities of the citizens who populated Ms. Morrison's town. (Apparently, the more oddities one can ascribe to one's characters, the better.) Overkill would be an understatement.
In the end, the novel that began so promisingly, left me feeling annoyed and bitterly disappointed. The last half of this novel felt rushed, and underdeveloped. Not because Ms. Morrison lacks talent, but because she apparently lacks follow-through.
Perhaps I wouldn't have been so disappointed with the development of this novel if I had not learned to care for these characters. It is not the fate of the characters which I find disappointing, it is the hurried and nonsensical style with which that fate was related. These characters deserved better.
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