Racial discrimination

Sula's Introduction

Edition of 1974

Sula (1974), the second novel by Toni Morrison, is set in an African American neighborhood known as the Bottom even though it is in the hills. This name comes from a “nigger joke” used to trick a slave who had been promised freedom and a piece of bottom land. The narrative begins with the community's destruction to make way for the Medallion City Golf Course and then flashes backward to tell the story of Sula Peace, who leaves the Bottom only to be perceived as an evil and suspicious force upon her return.



Edition of 1975


The novel is woven around the friendship between Sula and Nel Wright, two young girls who come from extremely different family environments yet become “two throats and one eye.” Nel's mother runs an immaculate, orderly household while Sula's home is filled with disorder and casual or absent moral habits and values. Other characters include Shadrack, the village madman; Eva Peace, Sula's grandmother; Hannah Peace, Sula's mother; the three Deweys, homeless boys taken in by Sula's grandmother; Ajax, Sula's friend and later boyfriend; and Plum, the drug-addicted son of Eva Peace who she burns rather than see degenerate and attempt figuratively to “return to her womb.”

Edition of 1980

Evidence of Sula's detachment displays itself early on: When Nel and Sula are young, they accidentally let a young boy slip into a river and drown. Later Sula watches with curiosity as her mother burns to death. Sula and Nel learn early that in the Bottom they are restricted by race, gender, and economics, and Sula eventually leaves to seek her freedom. Nel stays within the community, subscribing to and being limited by its mores and conventions. When Sula returns to Medallion ten years later, her return is symbolically accompanied by a plague of robins. Seeing Sula perform a series of incomprehensible actions such as casually taking Nel's husband Jude as a lover and later just as casually discarding him, and putting her grandmother in a despicably kept old folks' home, the inhabitants of the Bottom treat her with contempt. Nel's chagrin and Jude's abandonment of his family cause a split in the women's friendship that is only somewhat mended when Sula becomes deathly ill. Sula dies a disinterested observer of her own death, remarking to herself that it does not hurt and that she must tell Nel. More than twenty years later, the elderly Eva Peace reminds Nel of her similarities to Sula, which leads Nel to conclude that all the time she thought she was missing Jude, she was really missing Sula.

Edition of 1981

Sula is an intriguing novel, not only because of its controversial and shocking protagonist, but because of her amoral actions and values, and the novel probes into the minds and lives of its characters. Sula seeks freedom and the ability to define herself, and her insistence on her own freedom helps others define themselves. The novel was selected as a Book-of-the-Month Club alternate and brought Morrison national recognition because of its distinctive view of African American life and the lives of black females coupled with the detached view of the novelist toward her characters, which some considered unsettling and original. The novel reflects Morrison's view of the importance and relevance of African American history, and her ability to explain the underlying motives for the actions of her creations

Edition of 1982

Remarkable Sula

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