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Toni Morrison has always been one of my favorite writers, and I mourned her recent passing. Sula is not her greatest work (that, in my opinion, would be Beloved), but it is a wonderful story of growing up as a black woman and compares two life choices: be the obedient (occasionally battered wife) or become the vamp. Sula chooses the latter while Nel, her best friend chooses the former. After a tragic incident by the river, the two women's lives diverge and we see the Bottom transform over time from the 20s to the 60s. Beautifully narrated with great dialog and vivid characters, it is a real pleasure to read, again and again.

Toni's descriptions can be so alive and full of life. Here are a few of my favorite passages:
Her bare feet would raise the saffron dust that floated down on the coveralls and bunion-split shoes of the man breathing music in and out of the harmonica. The black people watching her would laugh and rub their knees, and it would be easy for the valley man to hear the laughter and not notice the adult pain that rested somewhere under the eyelids, somewhere under their headrags, somewhere on the palm of the hand, somewhere behind the frayed lapels, somewhere in the sinew's curve. (p. 4)

Shadrack, the half-crazed witness, the bard, comes back from the Great War disheveled: he took the blanket and covered his head, rendering he water dark enough to see the reflection. There in the toilet water he saw a grave black face. A black so definite, so unequivocal, it astonished him. He had been harboring a skittish apprehension that he was not real - that he didn't exist at all. But when the blackness greeted him with its indisputable presence, he wanted nothing more. In his joy, he took the risk of letting one edge of the blanket drip and glanced at his hands. They were still. Courteously still. (p. 13)

Helene and Nel make a voyage to New Orleans where they had to make do with the fields for their needs because the toilets were for whites only. Helene could not only fold leaves as well as the fat woman, she never felt a stir as she passed under the muddy eyes of the men who stood like wrecked Dorics under the station roods of those towns. (p. 24).

It was poisonous, unnatural to let the dead go with a mere whispering, a slight murmur, a rose bouquet of good taste. Good taste was out of place in the company of death, death itself was the essence of bad taste. And there must be much rage and saliva in its presence. The body must move and throw itself about, the eyes must roll, the hands should have no peace, and the throat should release all the yearning, despair and outrage that accompany the stupidity of loss. (p. 107)

Finally, a nice passage about the relentless femininity of Sula: 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 wth their own selves as she was. (p. 121)

Toni Morrison was uniquely gifted with words to express the deepest feelings of lust, love and grief and Sula certainly gives a timeless portrait of heartbreak and desire.

Fino's Toni Morrison Reviews:
The Bluest Eye
Sula
Song Of Solomon
Tar Baby
Beloved
Jazz
Paradise