Transcription of Clark Atlanta University
1 Clark Atlanta UniversityAfrican Tradition in Toni Morrison's SulaAuthor(s): Vashti Crutcher LewisSource: Phylon (1960-), Vol. 48, No. 1 (1st Qtr., 1987), pp. 91-97 Published by: Clark Atlanta UniversityStable URL: .Accessed: 07/01/2011 11:46 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at.
2 Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact Atlanta University is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Phylon (1960-). VASHTI CRUTCHER LEWIS African Tradition in Toni Morrison's Sula STERLING PLUMPP WROTE in a 1975 review that "Sula is a suitable black edifice that came before critical blueprints for it.
3 "1 He meant by that that critics measure black fiction according to a black aesthetic that uses touch- stones 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 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.
4 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 An African ancestral presence is not immediately obvious in The Bluest Eye (1970), but one is there in the presence of Mr.
5 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 rooted- ness 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 l Sterling D. Plumpp, "Sula," Black Books Bulletin, 2 (Winter 1974): 62-64.
6 2 Ibid. 3 Hellen, Murray, ed., Newbill Nile Puckett, Collection, Black Names in America Origins and Usage (Boston, 1975) pp. 449-450. 4 Geoffrey Parrinder, Western African Psychology (rpt., New York: AMS Press Inc., 1976) p. 181; for credibility of Parrinder's treatment of African Culture see E. Bolaji Idoww, Olodumare': God in Yoruba Belief (London, 1962), p. 26. 5 Toni Morrison, "Rootedness: The Ancestor As Foundations," in Black Women Writers: A Critical Evaluation, ed. Mari Evans (New York, 1983), pp. 339-345. 91 manifest itself in our lives. Black people in the Bottoms of Loraine, Ohio certainly do not recognize the African presence of Sula and Shadrack whom they consider pariahs of their community. Sula and Shadrack represent black sons and daughters of America who would be more at home in Africa.
7 In traditional African cultures, they would be neither pariahs or mysteries, since both represent tradition and a profound rootedness in African cosmology. To the people of the Bottoms, Sula is an enigma and Shadrack is a downright shame. Appropriately, Shadrack is the first major character to be introduced in the novel. He is Sula's ancestral presence - a representation of an ancestral spirit, a husband, a father, a provider dispensed by the gods to "always"6 be there for the displaced Sula. Theirs was a spiritual kinship - metaphorically, a mar- riage of traditional West African water spirit/priest to a water priestess, both oracles of a river Shadrack's divine nature results from his state of unconsciousness as a victim of shell-shock during World War I.
8 In traditional West African culture when one had lain unconscious for many days, people believed that that person's spirit left the physical body and entered the ancestral world where he or she became an active participant. Physically surviving the state of unconsciousness bestowed no insanity upon the person - no matter how ec- centric or erratic the behavior following the onset. On the contrary, uncon- sciousness bestowed a specialness and a spirituality, since the unconscious person had communed directly with the ancestral When Shadrack returns to the Bottoms from World War I, after having entered the spirit world of his ancestors, he establishes his residence on the banks of the river to earn his living as a fisherman.
9 His spirituality, his residency near the river, and his calling as a fisherman place Shadrack squarely in the role of a divine river spirit or more accurately as a West African Water priest who represents and speaks for a river god. According to Parrinder, "After the earth gods may come those very popular divinities of river and sea which play such a larger part in West African thought, especially for fisherman and those who live near rivers .. all the great rivers of Yoruba country have their presiding spirit."9 Shadrack is the presiding river spirit for displaced African people in the Bottoms who call Shadrack a lunatic and fear him. This would not have been so in traditional West African culture where lunatics were treated with awed respect,?
10 0 since it was believed that they were nearest in contact with the unseen spiritual world, and that the ancestral spirits spoke through them.'1 Toni Morrison, Sula (1973, rpt., New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1975), p. 53. All further page references to this work appear within context of this manuscript and are taken from this edition. 7 For synonomous use of these terms see Geoffrey Parrinder, West African Religion: A Study of the Beliefs and Practices of Akan, Ewe, Yoruba, Ibo, and Kindred Peoples, "Water Spirits" (1949., London: Epworth Press, 1967) 8 Parrinder, Western African Psychology, p. 181. 9 Parrinder, West African Religion, p. 45. '0 Ibid., p. 177. "Ibid. Vol. XLVIII, No. 1, 1987 92 PHYLON AFRICAN TRADITION IN TONI MORRISON'S SULA Lakes, streams, and rivers have always been associated with divinities and spirits among the Yoruba people in West Africa.
