Sula’s Compromise: Toni Morrison and the Editorial Politics of Sensitivity

Abstract

Abstract An accomplished editor in her own right, Toni Morrison made no secret of her dissatisfaction with the editing of Sula (1973), whose opening pages she critiqued as a regrettable concession to white publishers and white readers. Yet despite Morrison’s prominence in recent studies of African American book history, scholars have yet to fully explore how the contested revisions to Sula impact the novel and what they reveal about racially motivated editing practices in mainstream US publishing. This article situates Sula’s publication history as an exemplary archive of editorial conflict, one that illuminates shifting editorial approaches to race in American fiction amid the rise of US multiculturalism. Tracing Morrison’s responses to editorial disputes about Sula and Beloved (1987), this article argues that her career indexes the emergence of racial sensitivity as an editorial concern in contemporary publishing, anticipating contemporary conflicts over formal sensitivity editing as a specialized mode of manuscript review.