Literary and Historical Context Sula by Toni Morrison Literary and Historical Context

Toni Morrison: Biographical Details http://www. biography 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 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. It is a work of historical fiction.

Key Details: Characters The novel tells the story of a friendship between two black women raised in very different households in the same town: Nel Wright and Sula Peace. Many of the characters’ names are allusions, such as Eva, Jude, Shadrack, Ajax, and Chicken Little. In addition to Nel and Sula, we also get an intimate look at their community: of the customs and traditions they share and of the ways they deal with pain, fear, love, sex, and death.

Key Details: 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, while Medallion is the white town. 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— a landmark piece of federal legislation 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.

40 Acres and a Mule Following the abolishment of slavery at the end of the civil war in 1865, land was confiscated from Confederate plantation owners and given to former slaves, called freedmen, what is known colloquially today as “40 acres and a mule.” Many freedmen turned to sharecropping (an agreement in which a farmer works land on a rental basis, providing a portion of his crops/earnings to the true landowner), which was very similar to slavery in practice and kept many freedmen living in poverty.

Black Towns in the North The town of the Bottom is founded by a former slave; although Ohio was a free state and the freedman in this instance did not receive his land as a result of Civil War reparations, the arrangement is very reminiscent of the tradition of sharecropping in the south following the civil war. Ohio was admitted to the Union in 1803, at which point it would have been officially declared a “free” state, meaning that the events of the novel’s prologue likely take place before that year. Despite being a “free” state, Ohio aggressively blocked blacks from migrating there, even from other “free” states; Ohio also supported and practiced segregation policies in housing and education until well into the Civil Rights Era.

Black Soldiers in WWI (1914 – 1918) 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. Book begins in 1919, just after the war, when veterans like Shadrack and Plum are returning from service overseas. Shadrack and Plum, like many soldiers, were emotionally and physically scarred. PTSD was not considered a treatable illness (sufferers were “shell-shocked”). African-American veterans did not receive as much respect for their service as their white counterparts. 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.

FDR’s New Deal and the Public Works Administration In 1929 the Great Depression began. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) took office in 1932, he initiated a number of programs designed for economic relief. The Public Works Administration was one such program. From 1933 to 1935 PWA spent $3.3 billion with private companies to build 34,599 projects. Many unemployed persons were put to work building bridges, airports, dams, post offices, courthouses, and thousands of miles of road.

FDR’s New Deal and the Public Works Administration In response to the March on Washington Movement led by A. Philip Randolph, Roosevelt circulated Executive Order 8802 in June 1941, which established the President's Committee on Fair Employment Practices (FEPC) "to receive and investigate complaints of discrimination" so that "there shall be no discrimination in the employment of workers in defense industries or government because of race, creed, color, or national origin."

Key Details: Conflicts Man vs. Nature The power of the four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) Man vs. Self Sula and Nel’s struggles to find their identities Shadrack and Plum’s struggles with PTSD Man vs. Man Sula and Nel’s friendship Black (the Bottom) and White (Medallion) Man vs. Society Sula against the expectations of her community conflicts of gender roles conflicts between generations Shadrack’s mistreatment by others, especially after the war

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.