Sula by Toni Morrison - 1982

Tight, square, uncreased spine has some sunning. Clean, unmarked interior is lightly toned. A two-inch crease to the back fore-edge corner at the foot, but very little wear otherwise. 'At first, as they stood there, their hands were clenched together,' Morrison writes in this, her second novel, emphasizing the bond that intensifies between Sula and Nel after they're secretly implicated in the death of Chicken Little. 'They relaxed slowly until during the walk back home their fingers were laced in as gentle a clasp as that of any two young girlfriends trotting up the road on a summer day wondering what happened to butterflies in the winter.' The 'passionate friendship' between the two girls was famously explored in Barbara Smith's 1977 essay, 'Toward a Black Feminist Criticism', a foundational text for Black lesbian feminist studies. 'The confusion that many readers have felt about Sula may well have a lesbian explanation,' wrote Smith, who was also involved in founding both the Combahee River Collective and Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press. 174 pp.