Toni Morrison

The intense friendship shared by two African American women raised in an Ohio town changes when one of them leaves to roam the countryside and returns ten years later.

Sula

Hannah VG

«Laß lieber nichts raus aus 'm Mund, was dein Hintern nicht aushält. Wann heiratest du endlich? Du brauchst 'ne Schar Kinder. Das wird dich zur Ruhe bringen.»

«Ich will keine andern machen. Ich will mich selbst machen.»

biddy

Yes, but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely.

When I was a little girl the heads of my paper dolls came off, and it was a long time before I discovered that my own head would not fall off if I bent my neck. I used to walk around holding it very stiff because I thought a strong wind or a heavy push would snap my neck. Nel was the one who told me the truth. But she was wrong. I did not hold my head stiff enough when I met him and so I lost it just like the dolls.

She put her head under his chin with no hope in the world of keeping anything at all at bay. 

Always. Who said that? She tried hard to think. Who was it that had promised her a sleep of water always? The effort to recall was too great; it loosened a knot in her chest that turned her thoughts again to the pain.

Chloe

“Yes. But my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else’s. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain’t that something? A secondhand lonely.”

His absence was everywhere, stinging everything, giving the furnishings primary colors, sharp outlines to the corners of rooms and gold light to the dust collecting on table tops. When he was there he pulled everything toward himself. Not only her eyes and all her senses but also inanimate things seemed to exist because of him, backdrops to his presence. Now that he had gone, these things, so long subdued by his presence, were glamorised in his wake. 

Every now and then she looked around for tangible evidence of his having ever been there. Where were the butterflies? the blueberries? the whistling reed? She could find nothing, for he had left norhing but his stunning absence. An absence so decorative, so ornate, it was difficult for her to understand how she had ever endured, without falling dead or being consumed, his magnificent presence. 

She looked around for a place to be. A small place. The closet? No. Too dark. The bathroom. It was both small and bright, and she wanted to be in a very small, very bright place. Small enough to contain her grief. Bright enough to throw into relief the dark things that cluttered her.

“Whatever’s burning in me is mine!”

Then summer came. A summer limp with the weight of blossomed things. Heavy sunflowers weeping over fences; iris curling and browning at the edges far away from their purple hearts; ears of corn letting their auburn hair wind down to their stalks. And the boys. The beautiful, beautiful boys who dotted the landscape like jewels, split the air with their shouts in the field, and thickened the river with their shining wet backs. Even their footsteps left a smell of smoke behind.

… they had already made each other’s acquaintance in the delirium of their noon dreams. They were solitary little girls whose loneliness was so profound it intoxicated them and sent them stumbling into Technicoloured visions that always included a presence, a someone, who, quite like the dreamer, shared the delight of the dream.

chris

“She went to bed with men as frequently as she could. It was the only place where she could find what she was looking for: misery and the ability to feel deep sorrow. She had not always been aware that it was sadness that she yearned for. Lovemaking seemed to her, at first, the creation of a special kind of joy. She thought she liked the sootiness of sex and its comedy; she laughed a great deal during the raucous beginnings, and rejected those lovers who regarded sex as healthy or beautiful. Sexual aesthetics bored her. Although she did not regard sex as ugly (ugliness was boring also), she liked to think of it as wicked. But as her experiences multiplied she realized that not only was it not wicked, it was not necessary for her to conjure up the idea of wickedness in order to participate fully. During the lovemaking she found and needed to find the cutting edge. When she left off cooperating with her body and began to assert herself in the act, particles of strength gathered in her like steel shavings drawn to a spacious magnetic center, forming a tight cluster that nothing, it seemed, could break. And there was utmost irony and outrage in lying under someone, in a position of surrender, feeling her own abiding strength and limitless power. But the cluster did break all apart, and in her panic to hold it together she leaped from the edge into soundlessness and went down howling, howling in a stinging awareness of the endings of things: an eye of sorrow in the midst of all that hurricane rage of joy. There, in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning. For loneliness assumed the absence of other people, and the solitude she found in that desperate terrain had never admitted the possibility of other people. She wept then. Tears for the deaths of the littlest things: the castaway shoes of children; broken stems of marsh grass battered and drowned by the sea; prom photographs of dead women she never knew; wedding rings in pawnshop windows; the tidy bodies of Cornish hens in a nest of rice.

When her partner disengaged himself, she looked up at him in wonder trying to recall his name; and he looked down at her, smiling with tender understanding of the state of tearful gratitude to which he believed he had brought her. She waiting impatiently for him to turn away and settle into a wet skim of satisfaction and light disgust, leaving her to the postcoital privateness in which she met herself, welcomed herself, and joined herself in matchless harmony.”

Beatrix

It was a fine cry — loud and long — but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.

Others came to see that nothing went awry, that the shallow- minded and small-hearted kept their meanness at bay, and that the entire event be characterized by that abiding gentleness of spirit to which they themselves had arrived by the simple determination not to let anything

: not failed crops, not rednecks, lost jobs, sick children, third-class coal, educated social workers, thieving insurance men, garlic-ridden hunkies, corrupt Catholics, racist Protestants, cowardly Jews, slaveholding Moslems, jack-leg nigger preachers, squeamish Chinamen, cholera, dropsy or the Black Plague, let alone a strange woman — 

It would be here, only here, held by this blind window high above the elm tree, that she might draw her legs up to her chest, close her eyes, put her thumb in her mouth and float over and down the tunnels, just missing the dark walls, down, down until she met a rain scent and would know the water was near, and she would curl into its heavy softness and it would envelop her, carry her, and wash her tired flesh always. Always.

"Really? What have you got to show for it?”

“Show? To who? Girl, I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me." 

"Yes. But my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely.'"

What was taken by outsiders to be slackness, slovenliness or even generosity was in fact a full recognition 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. They did not believe Nature was ever askew — only inconvenient. Plague and drought were as "natural" as springtime. If milk could curdle, God knows robins could fall. The purpose of evil was to survive it and they determined (without ever knowing they had made up their minds to do it) to survive foods, white people, tuberculosis, famine and ignorance. They knew anger well but not despair, and they didn’t stone sinners for the same reason they didn’t commit suicide — it was beneath them.

Ruby Emmeline Fisher

That they were all she would ever know of love. But it was a love that, like a pan of syrup kept too long on the stove, had cooked out, leaving only it’s odor and a hard, sweet sludge, impossible to scrape off.

Sabrina D. 

She had been looking all along for a friend, and it took her a while to discover that a lover was not a comrade and could never be—for a woman. And that no one would ever be that version of herself which she sought to reach out to and touch with an ungloved hand.  There was only her own mood and whim, and if that was all there was, she decided to turn the naked hand toward it, discover it and let others become as intimate with their own selves as she was. 

"I don't want to make somebody else. I want to make myself."  

weirder plot-wise than I expected, in a way I really liked

Madi

all this time, all this time, who am i missing?

Maureen

"Every now and then she looked around for tangible evidence of his having ever been there. Where were the butterflies? the blueberries? the whistling reed? She could find nothing, for he had left nothing but his stunning absence. An absence so decorative, so ornate, it was difficult for her to understand how she had ever endured, without falling dead or being consumed, his magnificent presence…. Now that he had gone, these things, so long subdued by his presence, were glamorized in his wake."

***

Growing up, Sula and Nel were two peas in a pod. Despite coming from polar households, the two find solace and the warmness of female friendship in each other. After the passing of ten years, however, they couldn't be more different. Whereas Sula has gone to college and transformed into a wanton seductress, Nel is the epitome of a homemaker, bent on caring for her husband and children in the Bottom community. As their paths intersect once more, chaos unfolds and close-knit relationships are subsequently unraveled. 

Once again, Morrison sheds light on the plight of double exploitation by the Black community—but with greater emphasis on the struggles of women. Racial identity remains at the forefront of this novel, but there is much to be grasped from how her characters transgress social norms and defy seemingly fixed gender identities. In the end, readers are left to conclude that perhaps instability, and not passivity, was the driving force the community needed to propel them to reassess their lifestyles after all.

The intense friendship shared by two black women raised in an Ohio town changes when one of them leaves to roam the countryside and returns ten years later.

this was a beautifully written depiction of how they were girls together

gabby jusoy

It's interesting, but I'm not really invested. I don't feel like I really care about the characters because none of them seem to have personalities, they just do actions at random. 

I thought the writing itself was beautiful and very poetic. It sets the atmosphere very decidedly in each scene. But again, it just didn't feel like I was really following a story as much as I was reading poetry with bits of dialogue and action sprinkled in at random. 

In much the same way as I get when reading Virginia Woolfe, I get the sense that I'm reading something profound because of the prose, but at the end unable to identify what exactly the point of the story was. Why did I spend my time reading it?

It was a short book, so I'm not going to say it was a waste of my time. But I didn't get to the end feeling blown away or like I wanted to know more or what happens next, and for me that means it just fell kind of flat. 

Something I did really enjoy and felt a deeper connection to was Nel and Sula's childhood friendship. Morrison describes them as not needing to actually speak to understand everything about one another, down to what the other one might say. I feel like many women with childhood best friends have had that same connection, and if they're lucky it grows with the relationship. I know that is true of me and my best friend, despite how different we are as people, we always gravitate towards each other and have a deeper understanding of each other than we do anyone else. I felt like that part of this book was my favorite. It also reminded me of the book "My Brilliant Friend" by Elena Ferrante.

I need some time to figure out if I save this book and re-read it at a later date to try and glean new meaning from it, or if I donate it and move on with another Toni Morrison.

Emma Lechner

It's interesting, but I'm not really invested. I don't feel like I really care about the characters because none of them seem to have personalities, they just do actions at random. 

I thought the writing itself was beautiful and very poetic. It sets the atmosphere very decidedly in each scene. But again, it just didn't feel like I was really following a story as much as I was reading poetry with bits of dialogue and action sprinkled in at random. 

In much the same way as I get when reading Virginia Woolfe, I get the sense that I'm reading something profound because of the prose, but at the end unable to identify what exactly the point of the story was. Why did I spend my time reading it?
It was a short book, so I'm not going to say it was a waste of my time. But I didn't get to the end feeling blown away or like I wanted to know more or what happens next, and for me that means it just fell kind of flat. 

Something I did really enjoy and felt a deeper connection to was Nel and Sula's childhood friendship. Morrison describes them as not needing to actually speak to understand everything about one another, down to what the other one might say. I feel like many women with childhood best friends have had that same connection, and if they're lucky it grows with the relationship. I know that is true of me and my best friend, despite how different we are as people, we always gravitate towards each other and have a deeper understanding of each other than we do anyone else. I felt like that part of this book was my favorite. It also reminded me of the book "My Brilliant Friend" by Elena Ferrante.

I need some time to figure out if I save this book and re-read it at a later date to try and glean new meaning from it, or if I donate it and move on with another Toni Morrison.

Jim Hagan

“I will water your soil, keep it rich and moist. But how much? How much water to keep the loam moist? And how much loam will I need to keep my water still? And when do the two make mud?"

Actually the whole page from where that line was... I sat there, took all that in, and the world kept moving but NOT ME!

My first Black History Month entry is my second Morrison. And I'm really happy with my choice.

Toni Morrison's language flows with magic and an insatiable hunger as it explores otherwise devastatingly lived lives from a very real era of the past. 

Sula is girlhood captured in Morrison's alluring writing style. A complex female character with witchy tendencies (sign me up, already) dealing with generation gaps, grew to be an unapologetic misfit after seeing different worlds, and trapped in an unforgiving (with good reason) community. You can't help but feel something for the main characters, whether it's pain, a sad sorry, or a girl, WTF??

Already knew I was going to love this book DOWN because since reading Beloved, Toni Morrison has been one of my favorite novelists and I'd been dying to read all of her works... on to the third!

y✦

“I will water your soil, keep it rich and moist. But how much? How much water to keep the loam moist? And how much loam will I need to keep my water still? And when do the two make mud?"

Actually the whole page from where that line was... I sat there, took all that in, and the world kept moving but NOT ME!

Sula, GIRL...

My first Black History Month entry is my second Morrison. And I'm really happy with my choice.

Toni Morrison's language flows with magic and an insatiable hunger as it explores otherwise devastatingly lived lives from a very real era of the past. 

Sula is girlhood captured in Morrison's alluring writing style. A complex female character with witchy tendencies (sign me up, already) dealing with generation gaps, grew to be an unapologetic misfit after seeing different worlds, and trapped in an unforgiving (with good reason) community. You can't help but feel something for the main characters, whether it's pain, a sad sorry, or a girl, WTF??

Already knew I was going to love this book DOWN because since reading Beloved, Toni Morrison has been one of my favorite novelists and I'd been dying to read all of her works... on to the third!

Jasmine Ghartey

first read of 2024, read all of it in one day. could not bring myself to highlight anything cos every bit was memorable, the characters felt so familiar and not to quote youtube's resident librarian jack edwards but she really did capture the human condition™ of a particular people, of a particular time with such understanding. after the gap between parts one and two, the characters were very different but they'd grown so familiar to me i could envision the time they spent without it being written down

rain/anagha


first read of 2024, read all of it in one day. could not bring myself to highlight anything cos every bit was memorable, the characters felt so familiar and not to quote youtube's resident librarian jack edwards but she really did capture the human condition™ of a particular people, of a particular time with such understanding. after the gap between parts one and two, the characters were very different but they'd grown so familiar to me i could envision the time they spent without it being written down





Morrison's hypnotizing writing pulls you into a world of flawed and unwieldy characters caught in a strange web of relationships. Despite a slightly disorienting narrative, Morrison takes you on a journey through the Bottom that you won't soon forget. 

Isabella Chiara Vicco 

this may end up being my first ever reread—every character was brilliant and human and lovable in the most unlovable of ways

my stomach dropped on multiple occasions by the no frill depictions of grief throughout

༺ kat ༻

10/10 and then some 

this may end up being my first ever reread—every character was brilliant and human and lovable in the most unlovable of ways

my stomach dropped on multiple occasions by the no frill depictions of grief throughout

“Lonely, ain't it? Yes, but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely.”

“In a way, her strangeness, her naiveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings, had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like an artist with no art form, she became dangerous.”

Rebecca Lum

“Lonely, ain't it? Yes, but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely.”

“In a way, her strangeness, her naiveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings, had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for. And like an artist with no art form, she became dangerous.”

Geschichte einer außergewöhnlichen Freundschaft von zwei farbigen Frauen, die schließlich an den unterschiedlichen Lebensauffassungen zerbricht.

Roman

Jamieson

“It was a fine cry - loud and long - but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.” 


My entire literary education has been filled with vague references to Toni Morrison - and yet despite years and years of knowing her name, knowing she was brilliant and hearing so, so much about the beauty of her novels I never picked up one of her books until now. 



Sula is a beautiful book. Toni Morrison understands the hearts of people, seems to be able to perceive the souls of humans and writes about them with such aching accuracy. Her characters are so well fleshed out and complex, beings of neither good nor bad, but full of passion and life and brilliance. I loved the ambiguity of this book, and how clear it was made that people aren't all good or bad, mean and nice - and that maybe we need a little both of both good and bad. 

Sula is populated with so many different characters - so many strong, independent and fierce women. But so many tired women as well, or hopeless ones. Women who settle, women who refuse to. Women who are spiteful and envious, but also kind and generous and loving. 


  “Lonely, ain't it?
Yes, but my lonely is mine. Now your lonely is somebody else's. Made by somebody else and handed to you. Ain't that something? A secondhand lonely.” 


By far for me though, the highlight is the discussions of gender, race, community and how these aspects of our identity intersect. This book is incredibly poignant and still relevant to our current social climate. 

I must also comment on Toni Morrison's writing, because it is incredible beautiful. Very poetic and lyrical at times, but at others sharp and funny. Her writing literally could not be faulted - I found myself rereading passaged just because they were so beautiful. 


  “There in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning. ” 




I absolutely loved this - such a perfect mix of quirky and lyrics, full of beauty but also tragedy and pain and desperation. The characters are so well written, they basically pop from the page - they feel entirely real to me. 

I wish I had read one of her books sooner, but I'm definitely thinking of picking up more soon. This has shot to the top five of my favourite classics ever.

beautiful story about two girls’ relationship and womanhood growing up in a small black town in the hills of Ohio 

The characters are unraveled slowly throughout the book, and your eyes are glued to the page, reading all the horrible and beautiful things the characters go through and do. 

Dyveke 

Susanna Robinson

This is my first Toni Morrison. I actually hadn't heard of it until a friend recommended it! I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't this (and I mean that in the best possible way). This book encompassed an array of themes - family, race, friendship, society, betrayal - to name a few. It doesn't really follow one or two main characters; instead, it describes the history of 'Bottom', considers the town as a whole and encompasses several generations. And the writing is gorgeous to boot! If you haven't read it, you should definitely check it out!

P.s. Was anyone else reminded of Steinbeck?

Elizabeth Moore

“But the difference is they dying like a stump. Me, I’m going down like one of those redwoods. I sure did live in this world.”

Well this book is terrific (4.5 stars if I could give halves). And there are so many layers of things and feelings and statements to unpack from such a tiny wisp of a paperback spine.

From a mechanics perspective, the story itself is near perfectly constructed - this and the straight-up Level 10 Wizard use of textbook literary devices that don’t come along often enough in contemporary lit reminded me of why being an English Major with your nose always forcibly buried in actual purebred “literature” was actually so fun. My one complaint about Sula is that I didn’t get to read and then examine and deconstruct and discuss and write some stressed-out 4 a.m. paper about it in a classroom setting.

The archetypes of all the characters would also make Joseph Campbell’s head fall off. What an exquisitely sympathetic antihero Sula is. What a magnificently fallen and broken “protagonist” Nel is. Shadrack is dressed as a classic fool when he’s actually written the past and the future of the town he lives in and brings about it’s fate with the town’s own voices. Eva is the metronome that the entire story ticks away to. 

Friendship and betrayal, identity and loss of innocence, womanhood in relationship to manhood, black womanhood as both a singular and deeply personal experience, the chains and freedoms of sex, rage and rationalizing it, family and community, rebelling against the status quo and conforming to tradition, the power of myth. This story is about too many things to name and all of them are important and beautiful and awful and inevitable and since it’s only 175 pages you really should just stop wondering what it’s actually about and just read it.

Jenna

I want to share my experience reading Sula by Toni Morrison. @bylaurencapellan’s post yesterday about not being a book recommender (on the photo of Luster on Instagram, if you’re coming to this later) really rang true for me. This account is just a collection of my thoughts on books. I am by no means a professional reviewer (or even close), and I struggle to identify what is good or bad about a book in a technical sense as I’m reading. My connection with the books I read has more to do with the feelings I have while reading and after. And, I am not always good at describing why I feel a particular way (though I try). I loved Sula, and I loved my experience with it, and I’m not done experiencing it yet, as I am excitedly awaiting the discussion from @thestackspod on it. All of this to say: this isn’t a review. I don’t consider myself a qualified book reviewer. This is my attempt to describe my personal experience with this book.

This is the second novel I’ve read by Toni Morrison. I read this book in one day, which was great because the town and the characters swallowed me up and I felt just totally connected and “in it”. I went back and forth with the audiobook on @librofm, and that really enhanced my experience because there was something about hearing the story in Toni Morrison’s own voice, tone, and cadence, that made me feel like I understood it better. After listening to the audio, when I was reading, I could still hear the story in her voice. I feel like that’s the way it’s meant to be heard.

Sula is about a town nicknamed the Bottom, the Black residents of the town, a girl named Sula, her promiscuous mom Hannah, her larger-than-life one-legged grandmother Eve, and most of all her friendship with her best friend, Nel. The girls are so close that their friendship is more of a sisterhood. So many scenes stand out in my mind: two girls who are so comfortable with each other that silence is natural, wordlessly digging in the dirt with sticks; a daughter overhearing her mother say she loves her but doesn’t like her; a veteran waking up confused in a hospital bed with no explanation and a psychosis that makes him afraid of his hands, being sent home with nothing and no one to help him.

This is a story of Black people, flawed people, downtrodden and desperate people. Desperate people can be cruel, and this book has a bleakness to it, but is at the same time so moving. I don’t think you need to hear it from me to know that you should be reading Toni Morrison. I’m looking forward to exploring more of her work, and this is a book I won’t ever forget.

Angbeen Abbas

SO well written and beautiful, easily my favourite read of the year so far. 

Kathleen Mullins

I really loved the writing style & felt so drawn to understand the characters. This was my first Toni Morrison but I want to read more now!

Christine Liu

This is a beautifully written story about two young girls who grow up and grow apart, and about the ways they are shaped by their world and by each other. One of the themes that comes across in many of Morrison's books is the power of female relationships — how the bonds between friends and between mothers and daughters have the power to strengthen but can also be a destructive force in the corrosive presence of systemic racism — and that theme was explored in depth in this story.

Sula Toni Morrison

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