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Writing and publishing a book is hard. So many of us have stories inside, yet so few ever see the light of day. With the number of people involved in the publishing process, so many novels that do get published are so often muddied down from the story the author wants to tell, to the story they’re told the reader wants to enjoy. So when an author is able to release the story they truly wanted to write, something special happens. Sula by Toni Morrison is the perfect example of that type of story.
Last week I wrote about a handful of novels written in an attempt to help the white reader better understand racism (you can check that out here). But this week, I wanted to talk about one of my all-time favorite novels. A novel written so unabashedly for the author herself, that it transcends being a personal story, and one I feel I can relate to even having no obvious relation to anyone or anything in the novel.
A short book, under 200 pages, Morrison manages to not only bring to life a scattering of exceptionally written characters, but also the town it’s set in itself. Taking place in The Bottom, a town ironically named for its presence atop a hill, is a piece of land formerly owned by a farmer, given to his freed slave as a “gift” for completing some difficult chores for him. The hilly, rocky, ground of The Bottom was thought to be infertile, dead land, but nevertheless, a bustling town thrives into existence. The novel opens with the announcement that the town overshadowed by The Bottom (a predominantly white town) has been given the approval to bulldoze the town in order to build a golf course in its place.
What follows is a smattering of tales featuring young Nel Wright, and titular character Sula Peace. Characters who, despite their innumerable differences, form a fierce bond of friendship that carries them through the fifty years that the novel spans. From shared accidental traumas to the inevitable diverging of paths of the two now adults. These characters on paper have so vastly different lives than most readers that it seems impossible to relate, but as with so many of her novels, Morrison is able to bridge the gap between lives, and write characters so complex, that readers can find a piece of themselves in each character.
It’s very rare for me to read a novel that takes place in a world long gone and instantly fall in love. From the very opening chapter, I felt like I had fallen into the story and never wanted to leave. For me, this is the perfect example of the type of novel we should be teaching in schools in every city, in every state, and in every country. A novel published in the seventies, this is not a centuries-old novel withstanding the test of time, but rather an instant modern-day classic. A novel so brilliant I believe there are very few who would not benefit from reading.
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