Sula

By Toni Morrison

Categories: Literature & Fiction

Toni Morrison's 1973 novel follows Nel Wright and Sula Peace, two Black girls who grow up as close friends in the Bottom, a hillside neighborhood above a small Ohio town. Nel stays, marries and settles into the life the community expects of her. Sula leaves to roam the country and returns ten years later, defying every rule the town lives by, and her homecoming tests both the friendship and the town's sense of itself.

Recommended by 4 people

• Oprah Winfrey
• John Green: “I've recently re-read both Sula and The General in His Labyrinth, both of which get better every time I read them.”
• Adam Sessler
• Barack Obama: “you can't go wrong by reading or re-reading the collected works of Toni Morrison. Beloved, Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Sula, everything else — they're transcendent, all of them.”