I read Sula by Toni Morrison last December as part of my Nobel literature project. I read The Bluest Eye and Beloved in college. All three books have unsettled me and left me feeling like I need…something. I’ve been trying to write this reflection for a year. As the book fades from my memory, I feel like I need to at least say something. Like the other Morrison books I’ve read, it was heavy and dark, full of humans hurting and disappointing one another and at the same time the incredible strength and resolve, for better or worse, of black women.
The scene that has stuck with me is fairly early in the book, when Sula’s brother Plum is suffering from an intestinal blockage. Their mother takes him into the outhouse and uses her finger to relieve the blockage, and hundreds of pebbles pour out, saving his life. This is a rather gross scene to describe, but I’m not remembering it as a gross scene. For the past few months—let’s face it, since last October or November—I’ve felt creatively hampered, like my ideas are just below the surface but that I’m just not quite able to let them out and give them life. Politics and current events are affecting my ability to work more than they ever have in the past, and I’m having trouble tapping into my creativity. As I’ve been thinking about the difficulty I’ve been having in writing, I keep coming back to this scene from Sula. I feel like if I can get into the right mindset, can carve out the right space in my days and my life, can focus my energy where I should and allow my mind some down time when I’m not working, then my ideas will pour out of me like that. Perhaps that’s coarse, but I’m taking the inspiration where I can get it.
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