Sula, Toni Morrison
Sula, Toni Morrison
11 Rating(s)
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Sula

Author: Toni Morrison

Narrator: Toni Morrison

Unabridged: 5 hr 46 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/14/2007

Synopsis

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. 

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years

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?

About Toni Morrison

Possibly one of the best known and most talented Black authors, Chloe Anthony Wofford Morrison, was an American author, essayist, book editor, and college professor. She was born and grew up in Lorain, Ohio. She was the second of four children of a working class family. Her parents had difficult childhoods, with her father having witnessed a lynching of two Black businessmen who lived on his street. It was a very traumatic experience for her father, so he ended up moving to Ohio where there were more industrial jobs being offered. When Toni was about two years old, their landlord set fire to their house for non-payment of rent. They were home at the time. They laughed at the incident which she later described "as how her family kept their integrity and claimed their own life".

Morrison read frequently the works of Jane Austen and Leo Tolstoy. She took the Baptismal name of Anthony, which led to her nickname, Toni. She attended Lorain High School where she was on the debate team, participated in drama productions, and assisted with the yearbook. She then graduated from Howard University in English and the classics. Continuing her education, she completed her Master's Degree in two years from Cornell University, writing her thesis on Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner.

After graduating from Cornell, she settled in Texas, where she taught at Texas Southern University.

She has received about every prestigious award for her writing, which includes......The Bluest Eye, Sula, Song of Solomon, Beloved (which was made into a 1998 film), Jazz, Love, and A Mercy. Her highest honor was in 2012 when she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Reviews

Goodreads review by emma on February 18, 2025

every book i read this year that isn't by toni morrison is against my will. it was a year in which i read my first toni morrison book, and then i read 6 more of them. there is nobody, absolutely nobody, like her. morrison's writing is up in the clouds, filled with turns of phrase and plot that in any o......more

Goodreads review by Emily May on August 06, 2018

Because each had discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to them, they had set about creating something else to be. 4 1/2 stars. I have known for some time that I haven't read enough Toni Morrison. Before Sula, I had only read......more

Goodreads review by karen on February 14, 2021

looking for great books to read during black history month...and the other eleven months? i'm going to float some of my favorites throughout the month, and i hope they will find new readers! thanks for this book. Because each had discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that......more

Goodreads review by Fabian on February 07, 2020

This unerring writer has been the only one to get all 5 star reviews from me so far (for "Beloved," "The Bluest Eye," & this); all of her books have that same wondrous quality. What can be said about our most cherished writer that hasn't already been said? It is really hard to come up with a favorit......more

Goodreads review by Whitney on February 25, 2020

I wish I would've read this book for class or with a group because I felt like I was reading a story with a lot of points on a map that didn't quite connect for me. I loved the storyline of the two characters this rotated around, but the book also focused on the town at large, and those bits got los......more

Quotes

“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

“In characters like Sula, Toni Morrison’s originality and power emerge.” —The Nation

“Enchanting. . . . Powerful.” —Chicago Daily News

“Toni Morrison is not just an important contemporary novelist but a major figure in our national literature.” —The New York Review of Books

“Sula is one of the most beautifully written, sustained works of fiction I have read in some time. . . . [Morrison] is a major talent.” —Elliot Anderson, Chicago Tribune

“As mournful as a spiritual and as angry as a clenched fist . . . written in language so pure and resonant that it makes you ache.” —Playboy

“In the first ranks of our living novelists.” —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Toni Morrison’s gifts are rare: the re-creation of the black experience in America with both artistry and authenticity.” —Library Journal

“Should be read and passed around by book-lovers everywhere.” —Los Angeles Free Press

Awards

  • Audie Awards
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