Listen To Jamila Woods' Single 'SULA (Paperback)'

Chicago songwriter and poet Jamila Woods has revealed her first release since 2019's landmark album LEGACY! LEGACY!, on which each song was written in celebration of iconic artists of colour, including Eartha Kitt, James Baldwin, Basquiat and Muddy Waters. Turning her attention with new single 'SULA (Paperback)' to the groundbreaking work of Toni Morisson, the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, Woods' empowering ballad (with guitarist Justin Canivan) draws inspiration from the US author's 1973 novel Sula.

Jamila Woods explained her decision to focus on Sula: "It's the first Toni Morisson novel I ever read and it inspired the first chapbook of poems I ever wrote... 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.”

'SULA (Paperback)’ is out now via Jagjaguwar.