Toni Morrison, one of the most remarkable African American authors and her novels remind readers that there is a past to remember. African American literature, has its origins in the 18th century, has helped African Americans to find their voice in a country where laws were set against them. The position of African Americans in the leading society of the United States of America has not been an easy one. African Americans needed to find a new identity in the New World and were considered an underclass for a long time. In literature, African American writers have been telling the story of their multifaceted experience and history. The mission to find their own voice was even more difficult for African American women who became targets of numerous insults, both during and after slavery, and were forced to be silent and to stand in the shadows for a long time. A lot of stereotypes existed about African American women, about their behavior, family organization, or their abilities. These stereotypes demoralized African American women's position in the mainstream society and portrayed African American women as non-human beings. African American women writers helped with the setback of these stereotypes and African American women have been develop to be seen as "living human being[s] with [their] own desires and needs" (Christian, Black Feminist Criticism 16). Within the novels, Toni Morrison presents the complex stories of African American experience, and especially African American women's experience and their search for identity in the American mainstream society. In Toni Morrison novel Sula, women's friendship is presented as a safe haven from the dysfunction of lack of mother/daughter relationships, focus on the significance of women's bonding between Sula and Nel, the onset of the childhood friend into the end of their adulthood along with the betrayal that ultimately ended it all.
