Toni morrison biography sula summary
Sula (novel)
1973 novel by Toni Morrison
Sula is a 1973 novel by American author Toni Morrison, her first novel to be published after The Bluest Eye (1970).
Plot summary
Background
The Bottom was a Black neighborhood on a hill above the fictional town of Medallion, Ohio, set to be bulldozed at the beginning of the novel for the creation of a golf course. The Bottom originated as an agreement between a white farmer and his Black slave. The farmer had promised freedom and a piece of valley land to his slave should he complete some difficult chores. Upon the completion of the chores, the farmer regrets his end of the bargain, no longer wanting to give up the land. In order to get out of the arrangement, the farmer feigns regret to the slave over having to give him valley land rather than "Bottom" land. The farmer claimed that "Bottom" land (actually located on top of a hill) would be better than valley land because it was closer to the bottom of heaven.
Synopsis
The story is organized by chronological chapters labeled with years. In "1919," the first named character, handsome Shadrack returns from World War I a shattered man, suffering from shell shock or PTSD and unable to accept the world he used to belong in. As a way to compartmentalize the unpredictable nature of death, Shadrack invents a National Suicide Day to be held annually on January 3. Shadrack proposed that Medallion citizens could kill themselves or each other on this day and be free from death for the rest of the year. The town begrudgingly accepts Shadrack as a part of their community despite his outbursts.
In "1920" and "1921," the narrator contrasts the families of the children Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who both grow up with no father figure. Nel, the product of a mother knee-deep in social conventions, grows up in a stable home. Nel is initially torn between the rigid conventionality of her mother Helene Wright, who dislikes Sula's family instantly, and her inherent curio
Sula
96 pages • 3 hours read
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1973
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Overview
Sula, written by Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, was first published in 1973. It was her second novel, following her 1970 debut The Bluest Eye. Morrison published both novels while still working as an editor at Random House, where she edited books by Angela Davis, Muhammad Ali, and Gayl Jones.
Morrison would go on to win the National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon (1977) and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for Beloved (1987). The latter was turned into a film in 1998, starring Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. Morrison was also twice nominated for the National Book Award. Her first nomination was for Sula.
All told, Morrison (1931-2019) was the author of 11 novels and four works of nonfiction. She also long served as a professor of English at Princeton University. In 2019, a documentary about her life, Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, opened in theaters.
A man named Shadrack returns to the Ohio town of Medallion after being discharged from the veteran’s hospital where he recuperated after fighting in France during World War I. Not long after going back home, he institutes National Suicide Day.
The narrative then goes back in time several decades to describe the origins of the Wright family. Helene Wright (née Sabat) is born in New Orleans, the daughter of a sex worker and the granddaughter of a devout Catholic matron who raises her. After meeting Wiley Wright, an employee on a Great Lakes liner, she moves to Medallion and gives birth to her only child, Nel Morrison’s Sula is a story of motherhood, friendship, and love. It follows two girls, Nel and Sula, from childhood to adulthood and describes the way their deep bond is tested by societal norms. Set in a mostly black town in Ohio, the story explores the relationship between women in the segregated and patriarchal South. Nevertheless, the novel champions the many strong female characters it features as leaders, mothers, and property owners. The narrator describes the town in which Sula is set by first announcing its destruction. Before it describes all that existed in the Bottom, the novel is already lamenting its loss. Shadrack, a veteran of war, who is physically injured and scarred by war, returns to Medallion a drunk and a rabble-rouser. His concentration on death leads him to found National Suicide Day, a holiday to be observed annually on January 3. On this day Shadrack parades down Carpenter’s Road with a cowbell and tells the people that they may kill themselves or one another. Helene and her daughter Nel travel to New Orleans to visit a dying relative. They experience the difficulties of the segregated and discriminatory South while traveling. Helene and Nel meet Helene’s mother in New Orleans, who did not raise Helene on her own because she was a prostitute. When the two return Helene is glad to be separated from her shameful past and Nel is determined to one day be “wonderful.” She begins this venture by befriending Sula against her mother’s wishes. Sula and the Peace family descend from the matriarch Eva Peace. When she arrives in Medallion, Eva is accompanied by her husband BoyBoy and her three children: Hannah, Pearl, and Ralph (Plum). They move to Medallion when BoyBoy is offered a job assisting a white carpenter. However, BoyBoy eventually abandons the family and Eva is forced to raise the children on her own. Exhausted and impoverished, she leaves the children with a neighbor for eighteen months and returns with a mysterious new prospe .