It was so nice to revisit Toni Morrison. It has been a lot of years since I read one of her novels. I really liked the scope of this novel about a poor black community in an Ohio town, mostly during a 20 year span from 1920 to 1941 and with a check in in 1965. I’ve not taught a Morrison before, but I think this one would be excellent for the advanced literature classroom of upper school grades.

I loved how the character Shadrack’s mental illness and PTSD framed the story and led to town tragedy, and I appreciated the realness of the bickering, jealousy and dogma of the community. I found it true to human nature. I loved the touches of magical realism, too, like the robins that accompany Sula’s return and the deweys.

But of course, I loved Sula the most. She is a woman who doesn’t understand or own shame and refuses to apologize for being a woman and human. What the community took as “evil” people would now call “woke.” The relationship between Nel and Sula is so complex and beautifully imagined–two halves of the same person. Morally, neither better or worse than the other. I really appreciate how Morrison structured this look-in-mirror for one woman who always assumed herself to be “better.”

What I’m still grappling with and sorting through is the parade. The jazz funeral (or at least that’s how I see it) and what compelled people to join it and their real feelings about Sula. I also wondered for some time why narrative was spent on Nel’s childhood journey to New Orleans, but now I think it’s because of Shadrack’s parade, as well as revealing the depth of character of Nel and her mother, Helene Wright. And the passage about Nel’s grandmother is so fraught with symbolism and foreshadowing about both Sula and the tragedy at the tunnel, it makes a re-read of the novel necessary.

In conclusion, Toni Morrison knocks my socks off.