Book Club Guide

Sula

by Toni Morrison · 1973 · Literary Fiction

Key themes

The woman who refuses to be good — and the community that defines itself against her
Female friendship as the novel's deepest subject
Blackness and evil — how communities create their own outsiders

About this book

Nel Wright and Sula Peace grow up together in the Bottom, a Black community above the Ohio Valley town of Medallion, and their friendship is the novel's structuring force. Sula rejects conventional life; Nel conforms. Morrison's second novel asks whether a woman who refuses to be a good woman is therefore evil — and who gets to make this judgment.

Published in 1973, Sula was Morrison's second novel and was nominated for the National Book Award. Morrison described it as the novel she would most like to teach because it was the least sentimental about community and the most interested in female friendship.

Discussion questions

Sula refuses the conventional life — wife, mother, community member — and is therefore labelled evil. How does Morrison develop the community's need for a scapegoat — and what does Sula's presence actually provide?
Nel and Sula are so close in childhood that the narrative describes them as 'two parts of the same person.' How does Morrison show their divergence — and what is she saying about the choices available to Black women?
Eva Peace — Sula's grandmother — does something monstrous out of love early in the novel. How does Morrison develop this act — and how does it resonate with Sula's later act at the lake?
The novel has been read as an exploration of the limits of conventional Black community — of what gets sacrificed to maintain it. How does Morrison hold this critique within a genuine affection for the community she's examining?
Sula is Morrison's second novel, written before Beloved and Song of Solomon. What in it points toward the later work — and what is it doing that the more celebrated novels do not?