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Article: Toni Morrison's 'Sula': a satire on binary thinking.
- Article from:
- African American Review
- Article date:
- March 22, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1996 African American Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Attempts to define Toni Morrison's novel Sula are as numerous as they are diverse. The text has been read as a "black woman's epic," a study of "female friendship," an "antiwar novel," a "fable," an exploration of the "feminine psyche," and "a prime postmodernist text."! If one were to single out one particular interpretation and argue that it were somehow superior, somehow right while the others were wrong, that person would fall into the trap of binary thinking which is also what Morrison's text is "about." Deborah E. McDowell explains further:
The narrative [Sula] insistently blurs and confuses . . . binary oppositions. It glories in paradox and ambiguity ...