I decided to use the pen name Sula because no book has ever touched my heart the way Sula did. I read the book first in college and it really challenged my assumptions about what a “good” woman was. I meant to go back and re-read the book last summer, but I never made the time. I am going to read it again now – no excuses.
There is a quote in Sula that has stayed with me all these years. “I don’t want to make someone else, I want to make myself.”
I think I have always defined myself by my relationships and in relation to others. I loved this quote and this idea of this woman who can be so completely “selfish” and damned by others for being so happy and free – and yet it is still so hard for me to break away from who I am.
Perhaps its not who I am, but it’s who I feel I am supposed to be, and I just am not able to break away from that.
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