Morrison, Toni: 1931 - 2019

Sula, 1980 - Thematic Parallels: Friendship

Morrison, Toni: Sula, 1980
The topic of Sula is the nature of friendship, community, and identity within the context of an African American neighborhood.
The following books are thematically similar. They lend themselves well to being read in groups, compared with one another, or used to teach a similar topic over an extended period with a class:
- Cunningham, Michael: A Home at the End of the World, 1990, ~340pp
  This novel highlights unconventional friendships and chosen family, deeply examining the dynamics of long-term bonds.
  - Both works explore unconventional friendships that blur the line between family and romance, explore sexual and social nonconformity, and interrogate how communities enforce (or resist) norms. They show that chosen bonds, though precarious, can offer a profound form of “home.”
- Hoffman, Alice: Blackbird House, 2004, ~220pp
  This novel centers on interconnected lives of women across generations, often emphasizing community ties and the effects of loss, resilience, and personal rebellion.
  - Both works examine how place, memory, and women’s lives are intertwined, showing how love, loss, and survival ripple across generations. Each book turns physical spaces (a house, a town) into carriers of history, where the past continuously haunts the present.
- Miller, Sue: While I Was Gone, 1999, ~270pp
  This novel focuses on the impact of old friendships, secrecy, and personal reinvention—echoing Sula’s motif of estrangement and reconciliation.
  - Both novels use women’s friendships, betrayals, and buried pasts to explore how private choices ripple across identity, community, and morality. They resist clear-cut moral lessons, asking readers to sit with ambiguity.
- Strout, Elizabeth: Amy and Isabelle, 1998, ~300pp
  This novel explores intense personal and family relationships, including emotional tensions in mother-daughter roles, which may offer parallels to the exploration of inter-personal dynamics seen in “Sula.”
  - Both works explore female identity, mother–daughter conflict, the power and pain of female friendship, sexuality as scandal, and the pressures of small-town judgment. The big difference is in style and scope: Strout focuses on intimate realism in one white New England family, while Morrison embeds her characters in African American history, myth, and communal memory.
List of general discussion questions on Friendship (pdf)
List of essay prompts on Friendship (pdf)