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A review by camscornerbooks
Sula by Toni Morrison
4.0
This book hit so many themes so unapologetically and so forcefully that it can be an uncomfortable experience. I loved it. As a white reader who grew up around the black community of Detroit a lot of this story felt deeply familiar to me which I’m grateful to be able to say. While not able to comment on what is not my place it had the conversations held by the black community that I’ve wondered about before, not being party to hear them. Race and class and poverty and purity and freedom and mental health and northern black vs southern black and immigrant white hated by established white society but still feeling (for some reason) superior to established black society to children to parenthood to mixed race heritage….
Everything through the lens of a black woman with an unflinching gaze at the thoughts and attitudes of individuals in the time and place of Ohio in the late 1800s - early 1900s. What fascinated me was that while the characters were so vastly different and varied in their motivations and life views and outlooks and morality, none were demonized for what are typically considered “bad” thoughts or actions and no one was marked by the author as a “bad” person but she let the characters of the book make that judgement themselves. To the author each one was simply a person in all their messiness and complexity and lived experience that shaped and warped them.
This book reminded me a lot of The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Not for the similarities of story but for beautiful prose that swirled across the pages and enriched the entire story that was already stunning on its own. Both women were bluntly honest in their portrayal of each character as neither good nor bad but simply human.
I also really liked that Toni Morrison didn’t have white people really in the story. She didn’t have a white villainous foil to the people or the town. Whites were mentioned of course but more in the systemic way they created Bottom at the top of the hills and kept the best land for themselves and kept the work for themselves and the train cars for themselves etc. The story was about the black community of this place and what they went through as a result of systemic white oppression and greed but it didn’t give whites the page count of the story because they didn’t deserve it.
Reading a book that makes me uncomfortable as a white reader is a rewarding experience, not something to be avoided or complained about. The idea that a white person’s MILD discomfort at reading/learning something is cause for suppression and banning of knowledge and literature is insane.
If you as a white reader in 2022 can’t handle reading about a black experience in 1921 because you feel so personally attacked then all I can say is “the lady (or sir) doth protest too much, methinks.”
Everything through the lens of a black woman with an unflinching gaze at the thoughts and attitudes of individuals in the time and place of Ohio in the late 1800s - early 1900s. What fascinated me was that while the characters were so vastly different and varied in their motivations and life views and outlooks and morality, none were demonized for what are typically considered “bad” thoughts or actions and no one was marked by the author as a “bad” person but she let the characters of the book make that judgement themselves. To the author each one was simply a person in all their messiness and complexity and lived experience that shaped and warped them.
This book reminded me a lot of The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. Not for the similarities of story but for beautiful prose that swirled across the pages and enriched the entire story that was already stunning on its own. Both women were bluntly honest in their portrayal of each character as neither good nor bad but simply human.
I also really liked that Toni Morrison didn’t have white people really in the story. She didn’t have a white villainous foil to the people or the town. Whites were mentioned of course but more in the systemic way they created Bottom at the top of the hills and kept the best land for themselves and kept the work for themselves and the train cars for themselves etc. The story was about the black community of this place and what they went through as a result of systemic white oppression and greed but it didn’t give whites the page count of the story because they didn’t deserve it.
Reading a book that makes me uncomfortable as a white reader is a rewarding experience, not something to be avoided or complained about. The idea that a white person’s MILD discomfort at reading/learning something is cause for suppression and banning of knowledge and literature is insane.
If you as a white reader in 2022 can’t handle reading about a black experience in 1921 because you feel so personally attacked then all I can say is “the lady (or sir) doth protest too much, methinks.”