The setting of Toni Morrison’s Sula: A Black Woman’s Epic by Karen Stein takes place in a compacted Ohio town during the years 1919 to 1965. The author Karen Stein analyzes the providence of the women in two matriarchal households within the black community. The main characters are Nel Wright and Sula Peace. Their lives represent the diversion of choices possible for black women in present day America. The theme throughout Toni Morrison’s Sula: A Black Woman’s Epic is the narrative of the association between Nel Wright and Sula Peace. The author Karen Stein portrays the quantity of irony and numerous knowledge and realization that include insight and understanding to her analysis of contemporary black women. As I visualize Nel Wright and
While other political authors dedicate their written word to a more exact version of rhetoric, very few writers can enchant lines that are both fascinating and politically energized in the same circumstances. Toni Morrison combines literature and diplomacies into a consolidated figure, that one can describe as a brilliant choreography of exposition. Specifically, Morrison dedicates most of her work toward the organization of oppression. Precisely, the topic of segregation that is placed on display within novels such as Sula and Love; where one is the tale of African-American accomplishment under the suffocating umbra of segregation while the other interjects an African American entrepreneur who derides the African American community and endeavors
Collins, Patricia. Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment. New York, NY: Routledge, 2000
Walker and Marshall write about an identity that they have found with African-American women of the past. They both refer to great writers such as Zora Neale Hurston or Phillis Wheatley. But more importantly, they connect themselves to their ancestors. The see that their writings can be identified with what the unknown African-American women of the past longed to say but they did not have the freedom to do so. They both admire many literary greats such as Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, and Jane Austen, but they appreciate these authors' works more than they can identify with them.
In Sister Citizen, Melissa Perry-Harris uses the analogy of the “crooked room” to explain how Black women transform themselves into the societal roles of a Eurocentric society. The crooked room analogy is society’s portrayal of Black women, based on stereotypes justified by slavery. The challenge Black women face is standing upright in the crooked rooms of society. For example, the unsung civil rights leader Ella Baker, unintimidated by the men who devalued the advice of women in the civil rights movement. She helped organize Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC ), and the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC raised money for NAACP, conduct voter registration drives, spoke to citizens groups and travel to community after community to help people help themselves. In spite of the lack of recognition of Black women in the civil right movement, Ella Baker was able to stand upright in the crooked room.
Recitatif is a short story written by Toni Morrison about two girls, one African American and the other Caucasian, and their interactions with each other over the course of their lives. Which girl is which ethnicity is never revealed, but that only makes their interactions more relatable. Roberta and Twyla first meet in an orphanage after they are taken away from their mothers. They become fast friends, but when it comes time to leave the orphanage, the two quickly become distant. Over the years, Twyla and Roberta meet each other again many times, and each time, their relationship changes and they learn something new about each other.
Pruitt, Claude. "Circling Meaning in Toni Morrison's Sula.” African American Review 44.1/2 (2011): 115-129. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 14 Apr. 2014.
Sula by Toni Morrison is a compelling novel about a unique, self-confident woman. As in many other books, each secondary character in the story serves as a vehicle to explain the main character. Hannah, Sula's mother, is dominated by the element of air; she is free spirited, frivolous and child-like. On the other hand, the element of fire is prevalent in Sula, who is impulsive, hot-tempered and passionate. Despite the differences between the two, Hannah's lifestyle intrigues and influences her daughter. The effect Hannah has on Sula is reflected in many of her daughter's perspectives and actions. As a result of the ubiquitous presence of fire within her, in contrast to her mother's blithe spirit, Sula carries all of Hannah's immorality and actions to a more extreme level. Both women have promiscuous tendencies, do not have close friendships with women, and become easily irritated by Eva. The difference is that Sula's fiery character leads her to act more cruelly than her mother.
Although none of the novels were wrote in conjunction, each has a link towards the other regarding abuse, both sexual and spousal, as well as class oppression and the manual labor that was a necessity for survival among black women. By examining present society, one can observe the systems of oppressions that have changed for the better as well as those that continue to devastate the lives of many women today.
Although the institutionalization of the fields of Black and Women’s Studies were still years away, the aforementioned black women, along with many others, were essential to the development of the epistemological and theoretical concepts that would later become the foundation. We can clearly see gaps in the literature in the area of Black Women’s Studies, as the writers discuss these women from the standpoint of either the Africana or Feminist Tradition. Some make mention of the intersection of racial and gendered oppression, but only in passing
Toni Morrison’s novel Sula is rich with paradox and contradiction from the name of a community on top of a hill called "Bottom" to a family full of discord named "Peace." There are no clear distinctions in the novel, and this is most apparent in the meaning of the relationship between the two main characters, Sula and Nel. Although they are characterized differently, they also have many similarities. Literary critics have interpreted the girls in several different ways: as lesbians (Smith 8), as the two halves of a single person (Coleman 145), and as representations of the dichotomy between good and evil (Bergenholtz 4 of 9). The ambiguity of these two characters allows for infinite speculation, but regardless of how the reader interprets the relationship their bond is undeniable. The most striking example of their connection occurs right before the accidental death of Chicken Little. In the passage preceding his death, Nel and Sula conduct an almost ceremonial commitment to one another that is sealed permanently when "the water darkened and closed quickly over the place where Chicken Little sank" (Morrison 61):
In the weekly readings for week five we see two readings that talk about the connections between women’s suffrage and black women’s identities. In Rosalyn Terborg-Penn’s Discontented Black Feminists: Prelude and Postscript to the Passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, we see the ways that black women’s identities were marginalized either through their sex or by their race. These identities were oppressed through social groups, laws, and voting rights. Discontented Black Feminists talks about the journey black feminists took to combat the sexism as well as the racism such as forming independent social clubs, sororities, in addition to appealing to the government through courts and petitions. These women formed an independent branch of feminism in which began to prioritize not one identity over another, but to look at each identity as a whole. This paved the way for future feminists to introduce the concept of intersectionality.
In the story, “Recitatif,” Toni Morrison uses vague signs and traits to create Roberta and Twyla’s racial identity to show how the characters relationship is shaped by their racial difference. Morrison wants the reader’s to face their racial preconceptions and stereotypical assumptions. Racial identity in “Recitatif,” is most clear through the author’s use of traits that are linked to vague stereotypes, views on racial tension, intelligence, or ones physical appearance. Toni Morrison provides specific social and historical descriptions of the two girls to make readers question the way that stereotypes affect our understanding of a character. The uncertainties about racial identity of the characters causes the reader to become pre-occupied with assigning a race to a specific character based merely upon the associations and stereotypes that the reader creates based on the clues given by Morrison throughout the story. Morrison accomplishes this through the relationship between Twyla and Roberta, the role of Maggie, and questioning race and racial stereotypes of the characters. Throughout the story, Roberta and Twyla meet throughout five distinct moments that shapes their friendship by racial differences.
Toni Morrison's major element in the novel is racism. In the novel Sula, there are a lot of different themes and one of the themes is a community where Morrison connects the theme to the racism. Racism comes to play a major role in two girl’s life, Nel and Sula. The novel is focused on two girls living in Medallion experiencing different aspects of life, such as facing racial issues together. Nel and Sula both come from different families, but they both get really attached to each other and they share everything with each other.
“A wise mother knows: It is her state of consciousness that matters. Her gentleness and clarity command respect. Her love creates security” (Vimala McClure). Mothers play an important roll in a child’s life; shaping how a child will view things in the world, their religious beliefs, he way how they set up their values in life and etc. Every individual life is shaped by personal relationships they have with others. Toni Morrison’s Sula, tells the story of a black community in the fictional town Medallion, Ohio, where two girls grow up together, Sula and Nel, are formed by the influence of race, gender and society. Morrison describes the various stresses and sacrifices of motherhood and offers varied examples of motherhood. The female relationships and especially the mother-daughter relationship prove to be highly important for the identity development of the female characters in the novel. The women are faced with severe consequences due to racism. The double marginality the characters encounter influences the mother-daughter relationship and subsequently their identity development.
Smith, Barbara. "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism." JSTOR. University of Illinois Press, Mar. 1978. Web. 27 Aug. 2013.