Sula

by Toni Morrison

“What would you be doing or thinking if there was no gaze or hand to stop you?”

historically women are seen as naturally disruptive and their status is an illegal one from birth if it is not under the rule of men.

Because each had discovered years before that they were neither white nor male, and that all freedom and triumph was forbidden to them, they had set about creating something else to be.

“Sure you do. You love her, like I love Sula. I just don’t like her. That’s the difference.”

plain unwillingness to see the swallowing of her own flesh into the dirt, a determination not to let the eyes see what the heart could not hold.

And the loss pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. “We was girls together,” she said as though explaining something. “O Lord, Sula,” she cried, “girl, girl, girlgirlgirl.”

It was a fine cry—loud and long—but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.