We were girls together
Sula review
"In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood."
Sula by Toni Morrison
★★★★★
Morrison’s second novel takes place in a neighborhood by the name of the Bottom, in Medallion, Ohio. It’s a story of friendship (and its complexities), death, betrayal, the agency of women, reconciliation, and tragedy. Nel Wright and Sula Peace, two young girls who live in the Bottom, develop a deep friendship, grow together, and go through the trials and tribulations of life — following vastly different paths in adulthood. Their friendship is at the core of everything they do (“Their meeting was fortunate, for it let them use each other to grow on. Daughters of distant mothers and incomprehensible fathers. . .they found in each other’s eyes the intimacy they were looking for”), and Morrison extensively explores what female friendship, specifically Black female friendship, can look like. Nel and Sula share “rib-scraping” laughter, adventures, transformative/horrific memories, and a radical friendship.
Although it focuses primarily on the girls’ friendship, it also is a story shadowed by death. Multiple deaths riddle the story, and Shadrack, another Bottom resident, establishes National Suicide Day, because “it was not death or dying that frightened him, but the unexpectedness of both. In sorting it all out, he hit on the notion that if one day a year were devoted to it, everybody could get it out of the way and the rest of the year would be safe and free.” For Shadrack, a veteran of war, the day gives him some sense of control and while no one but him initially ‘observes’ the holiday per se (partially because of their wariness of Shadrack, partially because their whole lives feel full of suffering and cruelty already), it’s accepted as a “part of the fabric of life up in the Bottom,” indicative of the strong community that exists despite, despite, despite.
Morrison writes so beautifully, evocatively, and tenderly that I found myself entranced by this tale. It’s amazing how she’s able to write such complex, nuanced, and interesting stories in less than 200 words.
Favorite quotes:
“‘I sure did live in this world.'
'Really? What have you got to show for it?'
'Show? To who? I got my mind. And what goes on in it. Which is to say, I got me.'
'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.’”
“It is sheer good fortune to miss somebody long before they leave you.”
“When you gone to get married? You need to have some babies. It’ll settle you.'
'I don’t want to make somebody else. I want to make myself.’”
“‘I'm me,’ she whispered. ‘Me.’
Nel didn't know quite what she meant, but on the other hand she knew exactly what she meant.
‘I'm me. I'm not their daughter. I'm not Nel. I'm me. Me.’
Every time she said the word me there was a gathering in her like power, like joy, like fear. Back in bed with her discovery, she stared out the window at the dark leaves of the horse chestnut.
‘Me,’ she murmured. And then, sinking deeper into the quilts, ‘I want... I want to be... wonderful. Oh, Jesus, make me wonderful.’”
“They did not believe death was accidental - life might be, but death was deliberate.”
“‘All that time, all that time, I thought I was missing Jude.’ And the loss pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. ‘We was girls together,’ she said as though explaining something. ‘O Lord, Sula,’ she cried, ‘girl, girl, girlgirlgirl.’ It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had not top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”
Song of Solomon is next.
Need more of your writing 🙌 wow