A review by angelayoung
Sula by Toni Morrison

dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Storygraph recommended Sula to me and I loved it. Thank you. The prose is miraculous and the story salutary and heartbreaking. From Toni Morrison's passionately eloquent Foreword she argues, in writing Sula, for 'fideilty to my own sensibility' which is 'highly political and passionately aesthetic'. She 'refused to explain or even acknowledge the "problem" [of being a "Negro" writer] as anything other than an artistic one.'

Writing about the characters in Sula Morrison says:
Female freedom always means sexual freedom, even when - especially when - it is seen through the prism of economic freedom. The sexual freedom of Hannah Peach was my entrance into the story, constructed from shreds of memory about the way local women regarded a certain kind of female - envy coupled with amused approbation. Against her fairly modest claims to personal liberty are placed conventional and anarchic ones: Eva's physical sacrifice for economic freedom; Nel's accommodation to the protection marriage promises; Sula's resistance to either sacrifice or accommodation.

Read it. It's wonderful.