Title:  Sula

Author: Toni Morrison

How it fulfills the challenge: Toni Morrison is a person of color, and many of her books center on what it is like to be a black woman in America. Sula was nominated for the National Book Award, and her 1987 novel, Beloved, won the Pulitzer prize.

Genre: Fiction

Quick Description: Morrison’s book is a study on the nature of friendship and womanhood. The novel follows Sula and Nel through their lives starting in the 1920s.

Opening line: In that place, where they tore the nightshade and blackberry patches from their roots to make room for the Medallion City Golf Course, there was once a neighborhood.

She had clung to Nel as the closest thing to both an other and a self, only to discover that she and Nel were not one and the same thing.

Highlights: A quick moving, and sometimes shocking portrait of friendship. The drawing of life that it renders is as moving as it is unflinching.

Low Points: More melancholy than uplifting–this isn’t really a low point (just something to keep in mind before reading this book). It’s powerful, but not exactly fun to read.

Goodreads rating: 4 stars. Probably deserves 4.5 because the writing is so good.