Excerpted in The American Tradition in Literature, Sula explores the relationship of two young black school girls at the onset of puberty and the horror they experience at the death of a younger black child, their acquaintance. This section of the work, set in 1922, features the two young friends, Nel and Sula, at the critical nexus point of their emerging sexual self-awareness and the social counterpoint of the ubiquitous male attention they attract.