Introduction

Sula opens with a description of "The Bottom," the African-American section of a town called Medallion in Ohio, which has been bought by whites, who force out the remaining inhabitants and level the old buildings to create a golf course. The Bottom got its name from a joke played on a slave by a white farmer, who said he would give the slave his freedom, and a section of rich bottom land, in exchange for doing some difficult chores. The slave fulfilled his work and the farmer gave him his freedom, but was reluctant to give away fertile bottom land. Instead, he told the slave that a section of eroded land high in the hills was really bottom land, because from God's point of view, it was "the bottom of heaven." The slave, not knowing any better, accepted the land, which turned out to be worthless for...