“Space and Self-Identity in Toni Morrison’s Sula and Paradise”

The essay explores the relation between space and self-identity in two novels by Toni Morrison, Sula and Paradise. In the two texts Toni Morrison’s places are rich in contact-zones and borders that are essential to the comprehension of the strategies of race and gender constructions that the two novels, but in general Toni Morrison’s entire oeuvre – including her non-fiction titles – try to enact. At the same time places of escape/refuge/isolation, the two central spaces of Sula – “The bottom” and “Medallion” – and of Paradise – "The Convent" and "Haven/Ruby"– create a complex pattern in their mutual relation and in their relation with the external world. Such a system is essential to the understanding of the characters that inhabit the places of the two novels, as it deeply influences their identities and their various personal adaptations to the American interculturality in which they forcedly find themselves to live. As a matter of fact, all characters must come to terms with interculturality (often represented through spatial categories) in one way or the other: their lives are influenced by it and their attitudes towards it mirror their attitudes towards life and their ways of thinking, acting and adpating