Text by Ciona Rouse @cionar
Lettering and imagery by Karen Seapker @karenseapkerstudio

NCAFSigns_karen2

“The historical suppression of writers is the earliest harbinger of the steady peeling away of additional rights and liberties to follow.”

-Toni Morrison

Sula, a 1973 novel by Nobel Laureate in Literature Toni Morrison (1931- 2019), begins in the Bottom–an African-American neighborhood at the top of a hill in the fictional town of Medallion, Ohio. It tells the story of two friends–Sula and Nel–who are magnetized to one another in friendship, despite their differences. It’s a story of self-identity, female friendships, kinship and, ultimately, about freedom.

It’s also one of several books by Morrison that regularly appears on banned book lists and is slowly disappearing from school libraries, despite Morrison being considered one of the great US American writers.

Utilizing language and visual cues from both Sula and the Emancipation Proclamation, Rouse and Seapker explore the ironies within the text and the ironies of the text being banned.