Name: Sula
Rating: 4.23941798941799 (189 reviews)
ISBN: 0786246537

Toni Morrison

Sula

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.

M. Sosotris

Absolutely gorgeous and heartbreaking. Morrison’s prose is lyrical and profound and shocking when it needs to be. This isn’t a book to casually dip in and out of. You need to dive headfirst into it and let it carry you away. This is a powerful depiction of the ways in which an unfair, white world beats down Black women and drains everything they have to give, leaving them trapped in cycles of poverty and abuse, struggling to keep their children and communities alive and not leaving them any time to take care of themselves. The tragic friendship between Nel and Sula is so beautiful, told in expressionistic fragments filled with possibilities and shattered pieces of human fragility. 
I devoured this book, even though it took me into uncomfortable and painful corners of the human soul.

Tada

Friendship-tending is something that is both delicate and complex, you'd never know whether you are two entities bonding over universal interests or you are completing each other's lacks unknowingly—and when betrayal comes knocking, who else is going to cave in and apologize? Who else is going to animate the hidden animosity between each other? And who else is going to grieve more? Toni Morrison stays as simply one of the best writers of all time, I'm completely stunned.

l🌀

girlhood, bildungsroman, blackness, and redemption all wrapped in achingly beautiful prose. 

Mic Carter

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

Madi

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.

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

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 

“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.

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

Not as great at Song of Solomon but a great read. May end up teaching this next year…or at least more Morrison. 

Jeremy Boyd

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

Ruby Emmeline Fisher

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.

Angbeen Abbas

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

Sula

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