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Sula and Nel are born in the Bottom—a small town at the top of a hill. Sula is wild, and daring; she does what she wants, while Nel is well-mannered, a mamma's girl with a questioning heart. Growing up they forge a bond stronger than anything, stronger even than the dark secret they have to bear. Strong enough, it seems, to last a lifetime—until, decades later, as the girls become women, Sula's anarchy leads to a betrayal that may be beyond forgiveness.
Masterful, richly textured, bittersweet, and vital, Sula is a modern masterpiece about love and kinship, about living in an America birthed from slavery. Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison gives life to characters who struggle with what society tells them to be, and the love they long for and crave as Black women. Most of all, they ask: When can we let go? What must we hold back? And just how much can be shared in a friendship?
"Extravagantly beautiful... . Enormously, achingly alive... . A howl of love and rage, playful and funny as well as hard and bitter." —The New York Times
"Exemplary... . The essential mysteries of death and sex, friendship and poverty are expressed with rare economy." —Newsweek
"Toni Morrison's gifts are rare: the re-creation of the black experience in America with both artistry and authenticity." —Library Journal
This information about Sula was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Toni Morrison was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in Lorain, Ohio in 1931. The volume of critical and popular acclaim that has arisen around the work of Toni Morrison is virtually unparalleled in modern letters. Her six major novels - The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Sula, Tar Baby, Beloved, and Jazz - have collected nearly every major literary prize. Ms. Morrison received the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1977 for Song of Solomon. In 1987, Beloved was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Her body of work was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature in 1993. Other major awards include: the 1996 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the Pearl Buck Award (1994), the title of Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters (Paris, 1994), and 1978 ...
... Full Biography
Author Interview
Name Pronunciation
Toni Morrison: TOE-ni MAWR-uh-suhn
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