Sula by Toni MorrisonLiterary and Historical Context

Toni Morrison: Biographical Detailshttp://www.biography.com/people/toni-morrison-9415590/videos/toni-morrison-mini-biography-2176629591

Born Chloe Anthony Wofford in Ohio on February 18, 1931 Undergraduate degree from Howard University and Master's degree from Cornell In 1958, she married Harold Morrison, a Jamaican architect—they divorced six years later While she worked full-time as an editor at Random House and raised her two sons, Morrison

began writing her first novel, The Bluest Eye  Sula is her second novel, and deals with themes of race, womanhood, the effects of history, and

the possibilities of love, examining how all four intertwine to affect the beliefs and actions of individuals

Noting that black writers have often had to pander to a white audience instead of concentrating solely on the business of writing, Morrison has said that she wanted to help create a canon of black work

Morrison is the author of seven critically acclaimed novels Taught as a professor at Princeton University Won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Beloved In1993, she received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Morrison was the first African-American

woman to win the award.

Sula: Literary Context

Sula was published in 1973; Morrison’s second novel. It was nominated for the National Book Award. The novel tells the story of a friendship between two black women, Nel Wright and

Sula Peace. They suffer some normal and not-so-normal ups and downs, and we see them grow from young girls to middle-aged adults.  

Sula offers commentary on the lives of African-Americans and the hardships they face, on issues of gender, the relationships between mothers and daughters, and on the ways men and women relate to each other.

Morrison has said that she is invested in recording the history of African-Americans, and while Sula mostly focuses on the two central female characters, we also get a look at the African-American community of which they are a part, of the customs and traditions they share, and of the ways they deal with pain, fear, love, sex, and death.

Historical Context: Black Soldiers in WWI

WWI took place between 1914 and 1918. It was the largest war the U.S. had ever been involved in at the time, with over 38 million casualties and terrible new weapons, such as poison gas.

When the events of the book open, in 1919, veterans like Shadrack and Plum are returning from service overseas. Like Shadrack and Plum, many were emotionally and physically scarred from the experience of war, but African-American veterans did not receive as much respect for their service as their white counterparts.

During the war, more than 350,000 African- American soldiers served in segregated units. When they returned, many began working for civil rights, reasoning that if they were considered good enough to fight and risk their lives for their country, they should be treated equally to whites.

Historical Context: Setting and Timeline

The novel is set in the fictional Ohio towns of The Bottom and Medallion. The Bottom is a black town established by a former slave on land given to him by his former master. The Medallion is a white town. The conflict between the two is one of the novel’s primary conflicts.

The novel also concerns itself with the conflicts within the black community of The Bottom.

Toni Morrison on her hometown The novel spans 45 years, from 1919 to 1965,

during which many changes occur in the civil rights movement. This changing and fraught world is the world that Nel and Sula grow up in.

Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of federal legislation in the United States that prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson during the height of the American Civil Rights Movement on August 6, 1965, and Congress later amended the Act five times to expand its protections. Designed to enforce the voting rights guaranteed by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, the Act resulted in the mass enfranchisement of racial minorities throughout the country, especially in the South. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Act is considered to be the most effective piece of civil rights legislation ever enacted in the country.

Morrison’s work considers not only race, but the intersection between race, class, gender, and other identities as they play out in individual lives. The novel is interested in IDENTITY as it is described from the inside and ascribed from the outside.