During her manumission from slavery on
Sweet Home plantation, Baby Suggs learns that
her bill of sale bears the name “Jenny Whitlow.”
When the master of Sweet Home, Mr. Garner, in-
forms Baby of her official name, he asks why she
does not refer to herself as “Jenny” but prefers the
more unusual name “Baby Suggs.” She responds
that her husband called her Baby and his name
was Suggs. How would he find her in freedom, she
wonders, if she used her bill-of-sale name? Baby
Suggs’s choice to claim her husband’s surname
and embrace the affectionate name he gave her
not only illustrates her rejection of her slave iden-
tity but also demonstrates the power of choosing
a name given out of love. Baby Suggs declares her
love for her husband by maintaining the name
they shared to ensure that he can find her after
emancipation.
Baby Suggs extends her lesson of love to the Af-
rican-American community in Cincinnati, Ohio,
through her sermons in the clearing. She encour-
ages them to embrace their emotions and celebrate
their bodies. Laugh, cry, dance, she tells them. She
urges them to love their necks, hands, feet, and
most important their hearts. Love all of the parts
that the slave masters despised and would maim or
mutilate, she intones. The language and message
of Baby Suggs’s sermon invokes Romans 12:1–2, in
which Saint Paul appeals to the people to present
their bodies “holy and acceptable to God,” to be
“transformed by the renewal of [their] minds,” and
to know that their bodies are “good and accept-
able and perfect.” Similarly, Baby Suggs reminds
the African-American community that despite the
abuses they suffered in slavery, their bodies—their
lives—are holy and worthy of love.
Baby Suggs faces a crisis of faith when the
slave masters enter her yard to reenslave Sethe
and her children. Feeling defeated and fearing
that love is a lie, Baby Suggs takes to her bed to
“ponder color” and in doing so raises the central
philosophical question of the novel. Through her
contemplation of color, Baby Suggs asks how skin
color can be more important than humanity. How
could slave masters fail to see beyond skin color
to their shared humanity with the slave? As a folk
philosopher and “unchurched” preacher in the
novel, Baby Suggs suggests that love should mat-
ter more than race.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Morrison, Toni. Beloved. New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1987.
Barbara WilcoxSula Toni Morrison (1974)
Sula is principally about the history of a black
midwestern community called the Bottom, and
the people who live there, particularly Eva Peace
and her son, Plum; her daughter, Hannah; and her
granddaughter, Sula; Sula’s best friend, Nel Wright;
and Shadrack, the Bottom’s misfit. Through care-
ful emphasis on setting, history, memory, and
characterization, TONI MORRISON provides valu-
able insights into and understanding of the com-
plex lives of each character, all of whom are trying
to become the sole agent of their lives, to achieve
total subjectivity, no matter the cost.
To indicate the community’s importance, Mor-
rison’s narrator calls attention to the significance
of place at the beginning of Sula:In that place, where they tore the nightshade
and black berry patches from their roots to
make room for the Medallion City Golf Course,
there was once a neighborhood. It stood in the
hills above the valley town of Medallion and
spread all the way to the river. It is called the
suburb now, but when black people lived there
it was called the Bottom. (3)The community’s name is filled with irony, for
although it is located at the top of the hill, it is
called the Bottom. This inversion was the result
of a “nigger joke,” the narrator explains, “The
kind white folks tell when the mill closes down
and they’re looking for a little comfort some-
where. The kind colored folks tell on themselves
when the rain doesn’t come, or comes for weeks,
and they are looking for a little comfort” (5). The484 Sula