Sula] The audience (MARKET) for Sula includes women of all ethnic/racial backgrounds, young adult classrooms discussing black history and racism, and any other individuals who are interested in the history of blacks in the 20th century.

ADVERTISING COPY FOR CAMPAIGN).Sula, by Toni Morrison, provides an excellent historical vision into the life of blacks living in the community of Bottom Ohio after World War I and into the 1960s. This sometimes personally disturbing novel follows the lives of two black women -- from their emotionally troubled and violent childhood, through their different paths of adulthood, to their final meeting and reconciliation. Women readers, especially those who seek stories about historical women protagonists, will be engrossed yet dismayed by the way that Sula lives her life. Young adults and those who study black history will widen their understanding about the challenges and ordeals that blacks had to face even after gaining their freedom (

(CHARACTER AND INNER CONFLICT OF EVA PEACE AND SULA -- EVA, HAVING TO TAKE CARE OF FAMILY; SULA, NOT HAVING ANY CONFLICT DUE TO HER LACK OF EMOTION). The book has two main protagonists, Eva Peace and her granddaughter Sula. Abandoned by her husband BoyBoy, Eva Peace is left without a social identity and access to economic resources. To make matters more difficult, she must raise three children. She is faced with the internal, and real, conflict of finding a way of taking care of her three children. Recognizing that she can no longer turn to her friends and family, Eva seeks answers in another community. She returns 18 months later, damaged but not broken. She reclaims her children and once again rebuilds her life. Over the next five years, she would build a house to provide a source of income and a safe haven for her daughter Hannah, Hannah's child Sula, friends, extended family, and assorted boarders.

Sula, on the other hand,...

Instead, she has become nearly sociopathic in her approach to life. She faces each external conflict as just another proof that she has taken the right approach in life with her lack of care for anyone else but herself. A prime example: Sula watches her mother burn to death with no emotion what so ever.
Despite the fact that some of Sula's behavior could be considered unethical if not actually despicable, she is indeed a survivor -- a trait that is very much needed during these times in Ohio. Not caring whether or not she is accepted by either the other blacks or whites in the community, she leads her own life as she sees fit. She leaves her hometown for a decade, traveling across the country and attending college. When she returns, she refuses to maintain the family house as her mother and grandmother did before her. Her sexual relationships do not lead to marriage, nor does she expect or want them to. Morrison sums up Sula:

. she lived out her days exploring her own thoughts and emotions, giving them full reign, feeling no obligation to please anybody unless their pleasure pleased her. As willing to feel pain as to give pain, hers was an experimental life-ever since her mother's remarks sent her flying up those stairs, ever since her one major feeling of responsibility had been exorcised on the bank of a river with a closed place in the middle. The first experience taught her there was no other that you could count on; the second that there was no self to count on either.

(MAIN EXTERNAL CONFLICT -- SULA AND NEL'S RELATIONSHIP) The main conflict of the book is the relationship between Sula and her friend Nel, the daughter of a prostitute. In fact, it is impossible to discuss one of these characters without the other. One of things that will haunt Nel, if not Sula, for life is their drowning of…