Autism in Horror/Dark Literature: SULA

Sula (Toni Morrison, 1973) is an emotional tale, rippling around the lives of two young girls, Sula Peace and Nel Wright, who navigate the nuances of what it means to be a growing, black woman in a racist, postwar society and it's intersection with their own, communal identities; Medallion, Ohio is said to be 'The Bottom' of heaven. Rolling hills. A town filled with people, who like Nel and Sula, stir around their own ideas about friendship, sexuality, freedom, witchcraft, and death's ever-promising return, but some seem to settle these thoughts through projection; Sula, throughout the second half, becomes the town's bad omen. Described as a devil. A woman with no center. And eventually, plays the part of "evil", pitted against the "good", molding itself into the body of Nel. Symbolizing triumph over pain. So we think.

It's a beautiful, harrowing account of friendship, delicately woven by both a black feminist and pro-sex perspective; I lack the cultural intelligence to understand all of Sula's important layers about race, misogynoir, and the black community and I want to respectively encourage readers of this blog to not only seek out a better, more nuanced summarization of all the themes in Morrison's work from black writers, fans, and so on but also black disabled writers/fans who can comment on the intersecting relationship between race and disability, in ways that I can't.

I encourage thoughts surrounding Sula Peace being an autistic-coded character or not, but I can't deny that my mind perked up when reading some of Sula's thoughts on Nel and their enmeshment. I was reminded of the mechanics deep within the desire wanting to be like someone you love. Interested in their prints, solely as a guide to consider while in the process of making your own personality: a wobbly tower of them, split into slices of you.

Sula claimed that Jude was just "filling in space". The constant references the townspeople make about Sula being a person with no center. The final question Sula asks Nel, interested in how Nel knew that she was the good one and not her. These hints, in my mind, show how even as enemies, Nel was an escape from Sula's abyss.

Sula moves past being apathetic about her lack of understanding of Medallion's "rights or wrongs"; rather, she just doesn't think of them, until paired with Nel. And to me, seemed un-sinister with her desire to experience what Nel had experienced in marriage. To feel what her twin has already begun to know. Motivated to move like her, even in disagreement or the town's judgment of her. Calling her a witch, in her pursuit of Nel's conformed morality and its proximity to Medallion's interpersonal codes.

A young friendship can feel like an echo. Sometimes, when autistic children find themselves without friends, there can be borrowing from fictional people.

What I found fascinating about Sula and Nel's friendship was the shadowy quality of it. How Morrison starkly referenced the two girls as one mind, even when their choices took them in different directions; the roots were still there and persistently lived beyond the betrayal. Growing still, even when their ties felt severed. Even when grief, tempted Nel with hate for a friend that felt imaginary, not because Sula's actions, and her demand to be loved after, were unbelievable, but because it was true. Consistent and demanding, like Nel's right to grieve someone who bubbled guiltily in her concept of self. Because that also was Sula's self, too.

I've never read anything quite like Nel and Sula's connection, but I've seen it. Only in brief, superficial moments, that could have easily been something else, glittering in the wind, but I do know a home when I see it. I know that when two people build themselves together, it pulses with the threat of permanence. Especially when self feeds on the idea of being another.