Jamila Woods returns with new single ‘SULA (Paperback)’

Listen to the new Jamila Woods track ‘SULA (Paperback)‘ the first music since her landmark 2019 album LEGACY! LEGACY!, on which every track relates to an iconic artist of color. Inspired by Toni Morrison and her 1973 novel Sula, this time Woods subverts the prompt of her last album by not only honoring the artist but honing in on the characters created by the artist.

Focusing on Morrison’s depiction of the relationship between Sula Peace and Nel Wright, Woods finds freedom of spirit in its text. “It’s the first Toni Morisson novel I ever read and it inspired the first chapbook of poems I ever wrote,” says Woods. “The novel shows the evolution of a friendship between two Black women and how they choose to navigate society’s strict gender roles and rules of respectability. On Sula, Toni Morrison wrote, ‘living totally by the law and surrendering totally to it without questioning anything sometimes makes it impossible to know anything about yourself.’ Returning to the story several years later, it gave me permission to reject confining ideas about my identity designed to shrink my spirit. It reminded me to embrace my tenderness, my sensitivities, my ways of being in my body. This song is a mantra to allow myself space to experience my gender, love, intimacy, and sexuality on my own terms.”