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In creating a digital exhibit for Toni Morrison’s Sula, I decided to work with the themes of war and leisure, themes that I believe are crucial for understanding this text. These two conflicting states of war and leisure are at the heart of life in the Bottom. After all, the Bottom community is eventually consumed by a golf course. Not only is the neighborhood ultimately conquered by an elitist leisure sport, but while the Bottom still exists, its residents’ lives are defined by struggles for not only personal freedom and agency but for what little bit of precious leisure may be had. As the exhibit portrays, leisure is in short supply in the Bottom, but war, well war of one form or another, always abounds. Even leisure activities in the Bottom can be fraught with intense battles. I wanted my audience in some sense to get caught in the middle of this paradox. I wanted the audience to feel the frustration of Shadrack, Sula, and Ajax, but I also wanted the audience to feel the hope and resiliency of these characters as well.

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Photo taken from: www.stopstreetharassment.org

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Williams, Tennessee. The Rose Tattoo. Signet Publishing. New York, 1955.

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Pictured to the left is Marlon Green, who in 1965 became the first African-American commercial airline pilot. He is pictured on his first day on the job holding his fist out of the window, grinning from ear-to-ear. Greene's achievement marked a victory in the battle for aeronautical freedom. Consider how many African-Americans were denied the right to fly commercially. True, African-American pilots were used in WWII, but the situation was a decidedly different armed conflict where greater numbers of pilots were needed.
One of Sula's lovers, Ajax, real name Albert Jacks, has the dream of becoming a pilot-a dream that is deferred. Perhaps the most tragic scene in the entire novel is Ajax leaning against the fences of airports just trying to hear the conversations of pilots. Imagine seeing others living out the dream you will never get a chance to achieve for yourself. Ajax is denied the right to fly not because he lacks the possible skills or motivation, but because of the color of his skin-something he has absolutely no control over. Marlon Greene's victory is the victory of countless others, like Ajax, who had their dreams denied.

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To the right is a modern example of how to deal with street harassment. Consider the captioned cartoon at the bottom of this flyer. Is simply telling a street harasser to stop an effective strategy? Sula didn't seem to think so. When a group of white boys looking for trouble approach Nel and Sula, Sula takes out a knife and slices the tip of her own finger. She then tells the boys that if she can do this to herself, imagine what she would do to them. It seems to work. The boys flee. Obviously, Sula is not afraid of street harassment. She has her own way of dealing with it. Yet, the tragic fact remains that young girls in the Bottom cannot walk down the street without being harassed. First and foremost, according to the flyer on the right, one must assess the situation.  The flyer suggests walking away or calling for help. Sula does neither. She assesses the situation and then meets it head-on with her own style of confrontation. Imagine a victim of street harassment taking out their anger on themselves instead of their attacker!

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To the left is the cover of the Tennessee Williams play, The Rose Tattoo, which deals with a troubled relationship between a mother and daughter. Sula's epigraph is taken from The Rose Tattoo which seems fitting enough. The quote almost seems like something Sula would have said in the novel. Sula is a free-wheeling woman who has sex with whom she pleases: Nel's husband Jude and even, to the disapproval of the Bottom's resident's, white men. Most inhabitants of the Bottom grow to resent Sula and her wild ways.
Another obvious connection is Sula's birthmark which is described as being in the shape of a rose. Her rose birthmark appears differently to various characters, which might represent how different characters view Sula's lifestyle. The Bottom is a small place where people gossip about each other. The epigraph suggests the tension between Sula's sexual freedom and her deteriorating relationship with others in the Bottom, primarily Nel.

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To the right is a gif created from the 21st Century Fox television show, Futurama. The show is set in the futuristic world of New New York in the year 3000 where a suicide booth is a common sight on a street corner. Bender, a foul-mouthed alcoholic robot from the show, attempts to use the suicide booth, only to find it occupied by another. The idea of a street-corner suicide booth is simultaneously tragic and comic, along the same line's as Shadrack's Suicide Day in the Bottom.
Suicide Day in the Bottom is Shadrack's way of dealing  with the unpredictable nature of death. If he can find a place for death, then it won't be scary or unpredictable. Shadrack decides that January 3 will be National Suicide Day and he walks through the Bottom holding a hangman's rope and banging a cowbell, calling all residents to commit suicide. This disturbed the town's residents at first, but eventually they found a way to work it into their lives. Eventually, the National Suicide Day parade leads to the deaths of Tar Baby, the Deweys, and others. The absurdity of it all, is undoubtedly tragic, yet the way Morrison relates their deaths is actually rather humorous.

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To the left is an pdf version of the May 1919 edition of The Crisis, the monthly publication of the NAACP. Contained in this volume is a detailed account of the service of African Americans in WWI. Most notably, on page 14 W.E.B. DuBois wrote a remarkable reflection about the state of black soldiers returning from the conflict. DuBois wrote that African-American soldiers had just fought for liberty, and yet they were returning to country that still openly practiced lynching and other horrible forms of discrimination.
Today we might refer to Shadrack's condition as PTSD. Shadrack participates in the horrific events of World War I then suffers a mental breakdown at a veterans' hospital before returning to the Bottom. He then experiences the battle of day-to-day life in the Bottom. Shadrack refuses to assimilate back into normal society.  Instead he moves into a shack on the riverbank where he is free to indulge in his eccentricities.  Most people in the Bottom consider Shadrack mad, but ultimately harmless. Shadrack has his own battle to wage in the Bottom, a battle over his peace of mind.

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The novel's epigraph highlights Sula's free-wheeling, liberated lifestyle as well as the tension between her and the Bottom's residents who become ever-resentful of her antics.

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The novel's epigraph highlights Sula's free-wheeling, liberated lifestyle as well as the tension between her and the Bottom's residents who become ever-resentful of her antics.

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"Nobody knew my rose of the world but me...I had too much glory. They don't want glory like that in nobody's heart." -The Rose Tattoo, By Tennessee Williams

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http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/signet-books/181-1.jpg

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Shadrack's Suicide Day: Laughing in the Face of Unexpected Death

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Shadrack's Suicide Day: Laughing in the Face of Unexpected Death

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"Easily, quietly, Suicide Day became a part of the fabric of life up in the Bottom of Medallion, Ohio." -Sula, p. 16

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https://giphy.com/gifs/futurama-suicide-booth-ENB1fIlVnMRcQ

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Ajax is denied his dream of becoming a pilot. He is unable to do what he loves, unable to secure happiness and satisfaction for himself.

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Ajax is denied his dream of becoming a pilot. He is unable to do what he loves, unable to secure happiness and satisfaction for himself.

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"...he was leaning against the barbed wire of airports, or nosing around hangars just to hear the talk of men who were fortunate enough to be in the trade." Sula, p. 126-27

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In the first sentence of Sula, the fate of the Bottom community has already been sealed. The neighborhood that once served as a home for Nel, Sula, the Deweys, Tar Baby, and so many others has been replaced by a golf course.  The Bottom is now but a distant memory in the place it once occupied. Have all of the struggles the residents of the Bottom endured been in vain? The neighborhood has been replaced by an elitist leisure sport, played primarily by white men. Once the neighborhood residents would hear gossip about Sula's love affairs or they would hear Shadrack banging on a cowbell calling for suicide day, but now a different type of conversation is heard in this place: men talking about business deals over a round of golf, which clubs to use on a par five, and so on. The scope of this first sentence of the novel is all-encompassing. It is critical to consider the entire narrative and its characters in terms of the cruel irony of a low-income neighborhood replaced by a golf course that only the financially secure would have the time and money to be able to enjoy.

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In the Bottom, even a leisurely stroll down the street for young Nel and Sula can turn into a battle. Sula has her own way of dealing with harassment...

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In the Bottom, even a leisurely stroll down the street for young Nel and Sula can turn into a battle. Sula has her own way of dealing with harassment...

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"When the girls were three feet in front of the boys, Sula reached into her coat pocket and pulled out Eva's pairing knife." Sula, pg. 54

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Shadrack returns to the Bottom. He returns from fighting. He returns fighting for his peace of mind.

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Shadrack returns to the Bottom. He returns from fighting. He returns fighting for his peace of mind.

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"Blasted and permanently astonished by the events of 1917, he had returned to Medallion handsome, but ravaged..." -Sula, p. 7

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*The Medallion Club Golf Course. Westerville, Ohio

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 W.E.B Du Bois, “Returning Soldiers,” The Crisis XVIII, p. 14. (May, 1919).

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 W.E.B Du Bois, “Returning Soldiers,” The Crisis XVIII, p. 14. (May, 1919).

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*Courtesy of The Modernist Journals Project
"We return.
We return from fighting.
We return fighting."

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"Marlon Green." Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Smithsonia National Air and Space Museum, 2007. Web. 19 Apr. 2017.

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It begins where it ends. Has this struggle been in vain?

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It begins where it ends. Has this struggle been in vain?

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"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." -Sula, p. 3