I have finally read a book by Toni Morrison.    It was not hard to read, and she has a multitude of interesting characters to dig into.   The way she tells the story will have you hypnotized and entertained.   Her book is realistic about an isolated black town in Ohio which could still exist today.   The town was built upon a literally rocky hill called the Bottom that could not guarantee any crops—not like the fertile valley below in which white people lived.

Her book, Sula, begins with a black veteran of World War I who is released from a military hospital.  The doctors fixed his physical wounds, but not his mental wounds from seeing a fellow soldier’s face be blown off in front of him.   We used to call that condition shell-shocked when I was growing up, but now it’s called PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and is treatable.   His character, Shadrack, plays a role throughout the book, especially in establishing an annual National Suicide Day which people’s lives revolve around like it’s an official holiday.

There are various people with various issues in this small segregated town uphill from wealthier white Medallion City below.   As in all groups, there are good and bad people and others who are a little of both.   It is the story of two families:   Eva’s family that gave birth to Nel and Cecile Sabat’s family that gave birth to Sula.

Eva married an unfaithful philandering man who left her to feed 3 children in the dead of winter.  And, since there was no aid to help her, she had to depend on her neighbors’ help to keep her children alive until she could find some income.    She ended up leaving her children with a neighbor temporarily (10 months) until she found income as a result of a loss of one leg.    Eva was able to secure her family’s future by having a house built in which she could have paying boarders while restricting herself to the fourth floor.  

Hannah, her oldest daughter, a free spirit who kept Eva’s house in the form of cooking and cleaning and taking care of her own daughter, Sula, was known for having sex with every man in town—married and unmarried, but she never took ownership of the men which pleased their spouses.   Eva’s young son, Plum, went away and came back a cocaine addict.

Cecile Sabat had a daughter, Rochelle, who became a prostitute in a house of ill repute, and had one daughter, Helene, who her grandmother Cecile got as far away from Helene’s mother as she could.   Helene ended up marrying an older man, Henry, who she seldom saw because he was a merchant marine.   Henry treated Helene well and gave her what he could.   She was content to have one child, Nel.

Nel ended up being friends with Sula as a child.  Sula caused a little boy to drown while she and Nel watched.  They got away with that crime.    When Sula left town, Nel was despondent, but eventually got married.

However, when Sula returned to town, she had the same reputation as her mother Hannah except Sula, instead of tossing the men back, she possessed them so much that they didn’t want to go back to their wives after she ditched them.   The townswomen hated her for it because they lost their husbands when Sula didn’t want them anymore.   This was Sula’s attempt to feel love.

Sula was a sociopath and psychopath to me, but today it’s called antisocial personality disorder.   According to WebMD, she had a “poor inner sense of right and wrong” nor could she “seem to understand or share another person’s feelings”.   Sula had no conscience much like a psychopath would and a weak conscience like a sociopath.   Both lack empathy to know how another person feels.

Sula used her beautiful façade to attract men just as a flower attracts bees.   She was even found by her friend Nel having sex with Nel’s husband in Nel’s house which was the death of their friendship, and her husband left Nel just as the other husbands left their wives because of Sula’s rejections.   She told Nel that she didn’t think Nel would mind if Sula had sex with Nel’s husband.   I rest my case.

However, when Sula finally found a man she could love, I believe she thought she had a lot in common with him.   But, as soon as he found out she was in love with him, he fled the town just as she would have.   I really enjoyed the book.   There was never a dull moment in the Bottom.

Written by Rosa L. Griffin

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