African Tradition in Toni Morrison's Sula

Abstract

STERLING PLUMPP WROTE in a 1975 review that is a suitable black edifice that came before critical blueprints for it.1 He meant by that that critics measure black fiction according to a black aesthetic that uses touchstones such as assimilationism, combativeness, or a revolutionary emphasis for liberation. Plumpp also suggests that most critics stress the need for black writers to use black writing as a vehicle for teaching, and that they are most comfortable when black writers depict black people positively. He concluded that Sula is written according to none of these recipes; it is too complex and mature a book to be classified.2 The reason Sula is too complex to be classified is because Toni Morrison writes from an African point of view -an African aesthetic. Names are a vital connection to life in traditional African culture, and Sula is an African name.3 In the Babangi language, it means any one of or a combination of the following: (1) to be afraid, (2) to run away, (3) to poke, (4) to alter from a proper condition to a worse one, (5) to be blighted, (6) to fail in spirit, (7) to be overcome, (8) to be paralyzed with fear, or (9) to be stunned. In the Kongo language Sula means electric seal4 a meaning which is highly applicable to the critical thrust of this analysis. Knowing the Africaness of the major character's name adds a dimension that clarifies much of the mystery of the novel for the reader and places a demand on the critic to search for a blueprint for the novel based upon an African world-view a blueprint that is sorely needed for African-American fiction as people of African descent wrestle with problems of identity, as we move into the twenty-first century. Toni Morrison writes that her novels are rooted in an African past in that an ancestor is always present.5 An African ancestral presence is not immediately obvious in The Bluest Eye (1970), but one is there in the presence of Mr. and Mrs. McTeer; it is strong in the characterization of Pilate in Song of Solomon (1977), and an African presence in both characterization and setting is more than obvious in Morrison's fourth novel, Tar Baby (1981). Sula (1973) is Morrison's most complex work in reference to traditional African culture. This is true because the African presence and cultural rootedness is woven into Black-American culture without contrivance and with such extraordinary subtlety that neither the characters nor the reader are immediately aware of it; just as most of us are oblivious to the fact that after some three-hundred plus years in America, African tradition continues to