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The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison

4.07 · Rating details · 183,731 ratings · 9,996 reviews

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the a ...more

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Paperback, 216 pages

Published September 6th 2005 by Plume (first published June 1st 1970)

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Dec 04, 2012 Samadrita rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nobel-laureates, social-justice, in-by-about-america, 1001-and-more, racism-slavery-post-colonial, melancholia, feminism-feminist-undertones, gender-studies-sexuality, cherished, pg-woes

Just a few days ago I happened to have a conversation with someone (quite a 'well-read' person too) who said quite casually, almost in an offhand manner, how he found books written by women 'uninteresting'. On prodding him for the reason behind his 'disinterest', he replied that 'books written by women just do not engage' him. I didn't have the heart to ask him why a second time.
And there it sat between us, this knowledge of his disdain for women writers (for some hitherto unknown reason), like Just a few days ago I happened to have a conversation with someone (quite a 'well-read' person too) who said quite casually, almost in an offhand manner, how he found books written by women 'uninteresting'. On prodding him for the reason behind his 'disinterest', he replied that 'books written by women just do not engage' him. I didn't have the heart to ask him why a second time.
And there it sat between us, this knowledge of his disdain for women writers (for some hitherto unknown reason), like a breathing, venom-spitting, invisible monster quietly killing our conversation (thankfully!).

No evasion. Not even a half-hearted attempt at rescuing an uncomfortable situation. A wholly unabashed, flat out declaration made with the confident, self-righteous air of a reader who knows what good reading should consist of and, when it comes to that, exclude.

In retrospect, when I dwell on the memory of this horrendous, very real conversation, I experience a crushing hopelessness. It's not that particular guy I am mad at. No. He is only a minuscule part of the universal malady afflicting our collective psyche. It is this spirited tolerance for continued ignorance and apathy that infuriates me so. This tradition of belittling the female voice which speaks of personal sexual gratification, love, marriage, and childbirth, of the tyranny of beauty that forces her to adhere desperately to some predetermined standard of physical perfection - the right angle to her cheekbones, the right slope to her nose, the right lushness to her eyelashes, the right curve to her hips, the right skin color to match her hair and her eyes. All of this is terribly uninteresting isn't it?

"It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question. The master had said, 'You are ugly people.' They had looked about themselves saw nothing to contradict the statement; saw, in fact, support for it leaning at them from every billboard, every movie, every glance. 'Yes,' they had said, 'You are right.' And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it."

So what if she is a Nobel laureate? So what if she created the most haunting, poignant and unforgettable elegy to the horrors that American slavery spawned?
So what if she has crafted an eleven-year-old, ugly and unfortunate Pecola Breedlove with the utmost sincerity? So what if she has made her ugly and unfortunate Pecola yearn for a shred of love and dignity in vain till her last days? So what if she has tried to shed some light on the unloved, the mercilessly trodden upon rejects of a community caught in the vicious trap of fatal self-loathing? So what if she has thought up a newer way to deconstruct the violence of a sexual crime by removing the convenient 'glamour of shame' routinely heaped on the victim? So what if she has tried to bestow humanity even on the ones beyond redemption? So what if she has offered a window into a world where a million and one injustices compete for primacy every moment?

Such trifling womanly subject matters do not mesh well with the reading tastes of a man! After all, the Doris Lessings and Elfriede Jelineks, Nadine Gordimers and Alice Munros, Zora Neale Hurstons and Zadie Smiths, the Jhumpa Lahiris and the Banana Yoshimotos, the Brontë sisters and Virginia Woolfs, write/wrote books for only women to read and appreciate.
'Women can't paint, women can't write...'

It hurts to know that the Charles Tansleys of the world are alive and well. But, thankfully, we have the Toni Morrisons to restore some balance. ...more

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Feb 07, 2008 Summer rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2008, novels, i-will-lend-this-to-you

Toni Morrison doesn't get the respect she deserves and has rightfully earned. I think that part of this has to do with the unfortunate connotations people have regarding Oprah's Book Club and part of it stems from, if not outright racism and misogyny, than the racist and misogynist assumptions that Morrison is popular only because she is a nonwhite woman, liberal guilt etc. The latter is false: Toni Morrison has won the Pulitzer and the Nobel because she is an excellent author.

N.B. - Before I ge Toni Morrison doesn't get the respect she deserves and has rightfully earned. I think that part of this has to do with the unfortunate connotations people have regarding Oprah's Book Club and part of it stems from, if not outright racism and misogyny, than the racist and misogynist assumptions that Morrison is popular only because she is a nonwhite woman, liberal guilt etc. The latter is false: Toni Morrison has won the Pulitzer and the Nobel because she is an excellent author.

N.B. - Before I get jumped on by total strangers for making assumptions about Morrison's detractors, these are actual comments about her books, from Amazon.com:

"Toni Morrison is the most overrated author in America, it's only because of Oprah (the most overrated "personality" in America") that she is popular."

"You know, I know blacks have had a hard time in this world...I'm not naive...but there's a right and wrong way to tell us about your problems. This book is an example of the wrong way. To me it came off as preachy and heavy-handed."

"Once again, Toni Morrison puts an assortment of diatribes and racial angst into book form and masquerades it as literature with a moral message."

"What is actually between the covers of the book is 150 pages of the gross aspects of sex and femine hygene. That is not what makes brillant writing."

"The Bluest Eye does not celebrate the beauty of the black individual but instead simply and grotesquely trashes white characteristics (i.e. blonde-straight hair/blue eyes.) So if a little blonde-haired blue-eyed girl reads this book is she supposed to feel ashamed to have these characteristics?"

"I think it's terrible that Oprah Winfrey would recommend a book as anti-white as this. It's not as bad as some "black" literature that blames everything on white people, but it's close."

It's foolish to assume that the thoughts and experiences of women and of nonwhite American citizens is not worthy of writing about, and reviewers that slam the book as "anti-white" completely miss the point of themes of cultural hegemony, internalized hatred, taboos in beauty and sexuality, oppression, etc. And it's just darned lazy to discount this book's beautiful use of multiple narratives and excellent turns of phrase.

Morrison's literature often makes me angry and depressed, but not as angry and depressed as some of the reviews it gets. ...more

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Jul 16, 2016 Michael Finocchiaro rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, nobel-lit, american-20th-c, post-modern, novels, african-american-lit, favorites

Toni Morrison is one of my favorite authors. I discovered her writing with Beloved for which have a copy signed by her at a reading in Brooklyn of Jazz decades ago. In The Bluest Eye, she looks at the intersection of racism, self-hatred, poverty, and sexuality with realism and her beautifully descriptive writing style.

The book starts off with one of Toni Morisson's typically powerful opening lines:
Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it Toni Morrison is one of my favorite authors. I discovered her writing with Beloved for which have a copy signed by her at a reading in Brooklyn of Jazz decades ago. In The Bluest Eye, she looks at the intersection of racism, self-hatred, poverty, and sexuality with realism and her beautifully descriptive writing style.

The book starts off with one of Toni Morisson's typically powerful opening lines:
Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father’s baby that the marigolds did not grow. (loc. 110) We see this flower analogy towards the end of the novel again.

Beautiful but hopeless prose:
Our innocence and faith were no more productive than his lust or despair. (loc. 118) as well as
There is really nothing more to say—except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how. (loc. 121)

A beautiful metaphor for living in a racist society:
Being a minority in both caste and class, we moved about anyway on the hem of life, struggling to consolidate our weaknesses and hang on, or to creep singly up into the major folds of the garment. (loc 235)

I liked the feminist message in this paragraph on how girls are given dolls to instruct them subconsciously in their future roles as caretakers (thus why I didn't buy dolls for my daughter):
I was interested only in humans my own age and size, and could not generate any enthusiasm at the prospect of being a mother. Motherhood was old age, and other remote possibilities. I learned quickly, however, what I was expected to do with the doll: rock it, fabricate storied situations around it, even sleep with it. Picture books were full of little girls sleeping with their dolls. Raggedy Ann dolls usually, but they were out of the question. I was physically revolted by and secretly frightened of those round moronic eyes, the pancake face, and orangeworms hair. (loc. 265)

The beautiful difference between what people think she wants and what she really wants:
Had any adult with the power to fulfill my desires taken me seriously and asked me what I wanted, they would have known that I did not want to have anything to own, or to possess any object. I wanted rather to feel something on Christmas day. The real question would have been, “Dear Claudia, what experience would you like on Christmas?” I could have spoken up, “I want to sit on the low stool in Big Mama’s kitchen with my lap full of lilacs and listen to Big Papa play his violin for me alone.” (loc. 287)

How mass-culture is used to instill a racist hierarchy of beauty and value:
The best hiding place was love. Thus the conversion from pristine sadism to fabricated hatred, to fraudulent love. It was a small step to Shirley Temple. I learned much later to worship her, just as I learned to delight in cleanliness, knowing, even as I learned, that the change was adjustment without improvement. (loc. 304)

Wow, this is one mean, low-down couch!
It withheld the refreshment in a sleep slept on it. It imposed a furtiveness on the loving done on it. Like a sore tooth that is not content to throb in isolation, but must diffuse its own pain to other parts of the body—making breathing difficult, vision limited, nerves unsettled, so a hated piece of furniture produces a fretful malaise that asserts itself throughout the house and limits the delight of things not related to it. (loc. 495)

Brutal about how we feel we are perceived modifies behavior and thinking and reinforces poverty:
They lived there because they were poor and black, and they stayed there because they believed they were ugly. Although their poverty was traditional and stultifying, it was not unique. But their ugliness was unique...You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. (loc. 505, 511)

How our dreams eventually lose out to reality:
This family, on a Saturday morning in October, began, one by one, to stir out of their dreams of affluence and vengeance into the anonymous misery of their storefront. (loc. 520)

Fascinating, the two Christs here:
(Cholly was beyond redemption, of course, and redemption was hardly the point—Mrs. Breedlove was not interested in Christ the Redeemer, but rather Christ the Judge.) (loc. 555)

How hate can be self-sustaining:
Hating her, he could leave himself intact. (loc. 562)

The downward spiral of toxic masculinity:
Even a half-remembrance of this episode, along with myriad other humiliations, defeats, and emasculations, could stir him into flights of depravity that surprised himself—but only himself. Somehow he could not astound. He could only be astounded. So he gave that up, too. (loc. 565)

The eye analogy is, naturally, one of the most important throughout the entire book:
Try as she might, she could never get her eyes to disappear. So what was the point? They were everything. Everything was there, in them. All of those pictures, all of those faces. (loc. 599)

Pecola was, for me, a truly heartbreaking character:
Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently, for a year she had prayed. Although somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope. To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time. Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would see only what there was to see: the eyes of other people. (loc. 616)

The problem of peaking too early and being considered a weed instead of a flower:
Nobody loves the head of a dandelion. Maybe because they are so many, strong, and soon. (loc. 626)

Sad description, but so apt:
She looks up at him and sees the vacuum where curiosity ought to lodge. And something more. The total absence of human recognition—the glazed separateness. (loc. 643)

There is always humanity and humor in Morisson's work:
“Well, this hippo had a ball back in Chicago. Whoa Jesus, ninety-nine!” “How come you always say ‘Whoa Jesus’ and a number?” Pecola had long wanted to know. “Because my mama taught me never to cuss.” “Did she teach you not to drop your drawers?” China asked. “Didn’t have none,” said Marie. “Never saw a pair of drawers till I was fifteen, when I left Jackson and was doing day work in Cincinnati. My white lady gave me some old ones of hers. I thought they was some kind of stocking cap. I put it on my head when I dusted. When she saw me, she liked to fell out.” (p. 729)

A poignant description of winter:
By the time this winter had stiffened itself into a hateful knot that nothing could loosen, something did loosen it, or rather someone. A someone who splintered the knot into silver threads that tangled us, netted us, made us long for the dull chafe of the previous boredom. (loc. 800)

The mystery of racism to children:
What was the secret? What did we lack? Why was it important? And so what? Guileless and without vanity, we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness. (loc. 983)

How a town's name can make some people dream:
When you ask them where they are from, they tilt their heads and say “Mobile” and you think you’ve been kissed. They say “Aiken” and you see a white butterfly glance off a fence with a torn wing. They say “Nagadoches” and you want to say “Yes, I will.” You don’t know what these towns are like, but you love what happens to the air when they open their lips and let the names ease out. (loc. 1069)

This is so beautiful:
That is what she herself did. But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer. (loc. 1424) as is this:
She had not known there was so much laughter in the world. (p. 1498)

Ostensibly, this paragraph is about rotting teeth, but it is also about how repeated violence rots out the inside of many, many women:
And then she lost her front tooth. But there must have been a speck, a brown speck easily mistaken for food but which did not leave, which sat on the enamel for months, and grew, until it cut into the surface and then to the brown putty underneath, finally eating away to the root, but avoiding the nerves, so its presence was not noticeable or uncomfortable. Then the weakened roots, having grown accustomed to the poison, responded one day to severe pressure, and the tooth fell free, leaving a ragged stump behind. But even before the little brown speck, there must have been the conditions, the setting that would allow it to exist in the first place. (loc. 1501)

Such a wise deconstruction of romantic love and physical beauty in society's eyes:
Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another—physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. (loc. 1572)

The horror of a white hospital treating black pregnant women:
When he got to me he said now these here women you don’t have any trouble with. They deliver right away and with no pain. Just like horses. The young ones smiled a little. They looked at my stomach and between my legs. They never said nothing to me. Only one looked at me. Looked at my face, I mean. I looked right back at him. He dropped his eyes and turned red. He knowed, I reckon, that maybe I weren’t no horse foaling. (loc. 1607)

Beautiful description of freedom:
They were, in fact and at last, free. And the lives of these old black women were synthesized in their eyes—a purée of tragedy and humor, wickedness and serenity, truth and fantasy. (loc. 1794)

One of Toni's more ingenious sentences in this wonderful novel:
Only they would know how to connect the heart of a red watermelon to the asafetida bag to the muscadine to the flashlight on his behind to the fists of money to the lemonade in a Mason jar to a man called Blue and come up with what all of that meant in joy, in pain, in anger, in love, and give it its final and pervading ache of freedom. (loc. 2076)

I had to look up 'Moirai' which turns out to mean 'the Fates':
Public fact becomes private reality, and the seasons of a Midwestern town become the Moirai of our small lives. (loc. 2395)

Incredibly powerful passages continued:
I thought about the baby that everybody wanted dead, and saw it very clearly. It was in a dark, wet place, its head covered with great O’s of wool, the black face holding, like nickels, two clean black eyes, the flared nose, kissing-thick lips, and the living, breathing silk of black skin. (loc. 2433)

A little black girl yearns for the blue eyes of a little white girl, and the horror at the heart of her yearning is exceeded only by the evil of fulfillment. (loc. 2659)

Even her waking dreams we used—to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength. (loc. 2676)

The sad fate of Pecola:
We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word. She, however, stepped over into madness, a madness which protected her from us simply because it bored us in the end. (loc. 2680)

A beautiful, sad ending:
And Cholly loved her. I’m sure he did. He, at any rate, was the one who loved her enough to touch her, envelop her, give something of himself to her. But his touch was fatal, and the something he gave her filled the matrix of her agony with death. Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover’s inward eye. (loc 2683)

This book should probably be considered post-modern in the sense that the narration moves from character to character and it is up to the reader to intuit the speaker and the time at which the action is happening.

True love as represented by the blue eyes and blond hair seen in the movies frequented by Frieda and Claudia as well as Pauline and most of all, Pecola, is as inaccessible as their parents' understanding leading them to either steel themselves against feeling like their mothers have or go insane:

Pauline: "It would be for her the well-spring from which she would draw the most destructive emotions, deceiving the lover and seeking to imprison the beloved, curtailing freedom in every way."

As Wright and Ellison had described as well, life in the North was not a safehaven free from racism. Cholly was just as invisible in Ohio as he would have been in Mobile. The White ticket counter is still forbidden him when he buys his ticket to see his father. His Aunt and the women that raised him "ran the house of white people, and knew it. When white men beat their men, they cleaned up the blood and went home to receive abuse from the victim."

The cycle of violence feeds on itself leading to tragic consequences for each of the characters.
In today's amerikkka of immigration quotas, race-baiting, and continued white police-on-black violence, The Bluest Eye still remains as relevant today as when Toni Morrison published it in 1970 - 23 years before 1993, the year she was justly awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. It really is a must read.

Fino's Toni Morrison Reviews:
The Bluest Eye
Sula
Song Of Solomon
Tar Baby
Beloved
Jazz
Paradise ...more

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Jan 18, 2009 brian rated it really liked it · review of another edition

well, i'm experiencing severe bookface fatigue and wasn't gonna report on this until i read this cool-as-shit bookster's review:

http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/36813

she checked out the reviews on amazon for the bluest eye and listed some excerpts:

"Toni Morrison is the most overrated author in America, it's only because of Oprah (the most overrated "personality" in America") that she is popular."

"You know, I know blacks have had a hard time in this world...I'm not naive...but there's a right well, i'm experiencing severe bookface fatigue and wasn't gonna report on this until i read this cool-as-shit bookster's review:

http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/36813

she checked out the reviews on amazon for the bluest eye and listed some excerpts:

"Toni Morrison is the most overrated author in America, it's only because of Oprah (the most overrated "personality" in America") that she is popular."

"You know, I know blacks have had a hard time in this world...I'm not naive...but there's a right and wrong way to tell us about your problems. This book is an example of the wrong way. To me it came off as preachy and heavy-handed."

"Once again, Toni Morrison puts an assortment of diatribes and racial angst into book form and masquerades it as literature with a moral message."

"What is actually between the covers of the book is 150 pages of the gross aspects of sex and femine hygene. That is not what makes brillant writing."

"The Bluest Eye does not celebrate the beauty of the black individual but instead simply and grotesquely trashes white characteristics (i.e. blonde-straight hair/blue eyes.) So if a little blonde-haired blue-eyed girl reads this book is she supposed to feel ashamed to have these characteristics?"

"I think it's terrible that Oprah Winfrey would recommend a book as anti-white as this. It's not as bad as some "black" literature that blames everything on white people, but it's close."

people are dicks. yeah, not too controversial. genocide and war and rape and stalin and the crusades and inquisition and blah fucking blah. yeah, i know. we also have amnesty international and the sistine chapel and mexican food and rosario dawson. but you read the above and kinda wish that the fear and war-mongerers are right and that iran would just nuke out the whole planet.

ahem... anyway. i'm not here to answer the jackass prickfucks who find the bluest eye to be racist or 'anti-white' or a 'masquerade'... they're just idiots. it's this whole oprah thing. i mean... these are the same kinds of fools who get very smug and happy attacking the literary canon while sucking off equally canonized 'outsiders' such as hunter thompson, thomas pynchon, DFW, etc... (writers i enjoy but have no illusion that they're any more the outsider than is john updike) -- in other words: people who feel it's any different to deliberately swim against the stream as it is to swim with it.

so. all you haters of oprah's bookclub. a favor. please. just SHUT UP ALREADY. or is it just so irritating that oprah put leo tolstoy on the nytimes best seller list? and faulkner? and garcia marquez? yeah, that's some evil shit. i mean, getting hockey moms to read the road rather than some shit with fabio on the cover (sorry hockey moms) has gotta be up there with the alien and sedition act in terms of evils perpetrated on the good citizens of this country.
...more

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May 11, 2012 Rowena rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: african-american

"Being a minority in both caste and class, we moved about anyway on the hem of life, struggling to consolidate our weaknesses and hang on, or to creep singly up into the major folds of the garment. Our peripheral existence, however, was something we had learned to deal with--probably because it was abstract."- Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

I'm rereading Morrison's books in chronological order in 2016 and I created a private group here on Goodreads for a few of us who are interested in doing the "Being a minority in both caste and class, we moved about anyway on the hem of life, struggling to consolidate our weaknesses and hang on, or to creep singly up into the major folds of the garment. Our peripheral existence, however, was something we had learned to deal with--probably because it was abstract."- Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

I'm rereading Morrison's books in chronological order in 2016 and I created a private group here on Goodreads for a few of us who are interested in doing the same thing. Discussing this book with others has been very interesting because we all have different perspectives and can share them, expanding our own understanding of the book, it's been a great experience.

It's been four years since I first read The Bluest Eye and I was extremely touched and saddened by it the first time around. I count it as one of my favourite Morrison books and I'm glad to say that after a reread it's still very much so. I'm trying hard to find the words to describe how I feel about this book and it's still hard because it's a gut-wrenching book which I love, though "love" sounds like the wrong word for it: how can I love a book that is filled with so much pain, sadness and grief? This book condenses so much tragedy, despair and sadness in a relatively small space. What do you focus on? It can get a bit overwhelming. Morrison's advice seems to be: "There is really nothing more to say--except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how."

Whenever I discuss this book with people I know, Pecola is often the first name that comes up. Pecola, the poor, unloved child who prayed for blue eyes. It was hard not to draw comparisons between her and Celie (The Colour Purple), another abused black girl who was called ugly by all those around her. And I think of all the little black girls I've known who hated being black, who hated their hair, their noses, their eye colour, who prayed for "good hair", lighter skin complexion etc.

Morrison shows the vulnerability of children so well, and the consequences of parents not telling them what they need to know in enough detail, which results in them being forced to draw conclusions on their own. What they aren't told, they glean from observations and discussions with each other. Sometimes the truth isn't known until they are older:

"My mother's anger humiliates me; her words chafe my cheeks, and I am crying. I do not know that she is not angry at me, but at my sickness."

There are so many parts of the book that show children as voiceless, black children in particular. There's the issue of representation and how the white dolls our parents thought we wanted probably did more harm than good. I think this is an important book in revealing the other America.

My book had an afterword by Morrison which I'm so glad I read. I had no idea that this book was inspired by a conversation she'd had with an elementary school friend who prayed for blue eyes. It's conversations like this that never leave you, it seems, but it might take you until you are an adult to understand the true meaning of what those words held and what they say about our society. Like Malcolm X asked, "Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet?"

"And twenty years later I was still wondering about how one learns that. Who told her? Who made her feel that it was better to be a freak than what she was? Who had looked at her and found her so wanting, so small a weight on the beauty scale?...I focused, therefore, on how something as grotesque as the demonization of an entire race could take root inside the most delicate member of society: a child; the most vulnerable member: a female."- Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye afterword ...more

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Jun 21, 2008 Thu rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction

When we finished this book, about half the class--- including me--- were infuriated at Morrison for humanizing certain characters that caused Pecola to suffer the most. "Is she saying what they did was okay?! Is she telling us they weren't to blame and we should feel sorry for them?!" I remember writing my "objective" and "tone-neutral" in-class essay while trying to stifle my own feelings of resentment.

I know now that the answers to those two questions were no and no. What Morrison wanted us t ...more

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Sep 08, 2012 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, united-states, 1001-book, historical, 20th-century, literature

(365 From 1001 Books) - The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye is a novel written by Toni Morrison in 1970. Morrison, a single mother of two sons, wrote the novel while she taught at Howard University. The novel is set in 1941 and centers around the life of a young African-American girl named Pecola who grows up during the years following the Great Depression in Lorain, Ohio. Due to Pecola's harsh characteristics and dark skin, she is consistently regarded as "ugly".

As a result, she develo (365 From 1001 Books) - The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye is a novel written by Toni Morrison in 1970. Morrison, a single mother of two sons, wrote the novel while she taught at Howard University. The novel is set in 1941 and centers around the life of a young African-American girl named Pecola who grows up during the years following the Great Depression in Lorain, Ohio. Due to Pecola's harsh characteristics and dark skin, she is consistently regarded as "ugly".

As a result, she develops an inferiority complex, which fuels her desire for the blue eyes she equates with "whiteness". The point of view of the novel switches between the perspective of Claudia MacTeer, the daughter of Pecola's foster parents, and a third-person narrator with inset narratives in the first person. Due to controversial topics in the book including racism, incest, and child molestation, there have been numerous attempts to ban it from schools and libraries.

تاریخ نخستین خوانش: روز هشتم ماه سپتامبر سال 2008میلادی

عنوان: آبی ترين چشم؛ نویسنده: تونی موریسون؛ مترجم: نیلوفر شیدمهر؛ علی آذرنگ (جباری)؛ تهران، دریچه، 1385؛ در 264ص؛ شابک 9648072043؛ موضوع داستانهای سیاهان - ایالات متحده - سده 20م

عنوان: آبی ترين چشم؛ نویسنده: تونی موریسون؛ مترجم: کیومرث پارسای؛ تهران، نشر علم، 1385؛ در 310ص؛ شابک 96484056205؛

هشدار برای آنها که کتاب را هنوز نخوانده اند، اگر میخواهید کتاب را بخوانید لطفا سطرهای پایانی این نوشتار را نخوانید ...؛

راوی داستان، دخترکی با صداقت، و صمیمیت کودکان نابالغ است؛ زندگی خانواده‌ ی: «بریدلاو»؛ شخصیت محوری اصلی اثر: «پکولا بریدلاو»، از همین خانواده ‌ی محروم و آواره سر درمیآورد؛ «پکولا بریدلاو»، دختری است که به تازگی دوران بلوغ را تجربه کرده، او در خانواده ‌ای با نگرش‌ها، رفتارها، و کردارهای پر از تضاد، چشم به جهان گشوده، که اعضای آن تنها در هم‌نژاد بودن و هم‌خانواده بودن اشتراک دارند؛ اعضای خانواده، ستمی دوگانه ـ از سوی نژاد برتر و پدر خانواده ـ را بر دوش خود همواره احساس می‌کنند؛ و این ستم را بیش از همه پیکر نحیف و بی‌گناه «پکولا»، دختر نوجوان بی‌دفاع، تحمل میکند؛ پدر، یک‌بار خانه را آتش میزند، و افراد خانواده را آواره و بیخانمان میکند؛ یک‌بار نیز، دنیایی از درد و رنج را بر سر دختر بیچاره ی خویش، آوار میکند؛ دختر با آرزویی بزرگ در دل؛ اینکه چشمانی آبی، هم‌چون دخترکان سفیدپوست داشته باشد، زنده میماند؛ او آبیترین چشمان دنیا را میخواهد؛

تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 10/10/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی ...more

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Apr 16, 2019 Kenny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: black-authors

4.5/5

“Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.”
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

I have several reading goals for 2019 ~~ get some big books off my Want to Read list, explore more Asian writing, and visit authors I have missed along my reading journey. One of the most glaring omissions on this list was Toni Morriso ...more

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Mar 01, 2017 Felice Laverne rated it it was amazing

Shelves: cultural-surveys, group-reads, padmore-culture-reviews, african-american-fiction, 4-reread, read-2017, classic-fiction, coming-of-age, lit-fic, reviewed-on-amazon

...his mother did not like him to play with niggers. She had explained to him the difference between colored people and niggers. They were easily identifiable. Colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud...The line between colored and nigger was not always clear; subtle and telltale signs threatened to erode it, and the watch had to be constant.

While I was not the biggest fan of Morrison's style in this novel, I did fully appreciate the dagger-sharp insight that she brought t ...his mother did not like him to play with niggers. She had explained to him the difference between colored people and niggers. They were easily identifiable. Colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud...The line between colored and nigger was not always clear; subtle and telltale signs threatened to erode it, and the watch had to be constant.

While I was not the biggest fan of Morrison's style in this novel, I did fully appreciate the dagger-sharp insight that she brought to the color caste system that is so prevalent in African-American culture, even today. Her dialogue rang so true, I could hear it coming directly out of my mother's mouth, my grandmother's mouth, and those of all of the women who've ever filled our kitchens with raucous communal fun and glum communal tragedy alike. Her use of the Dick & Jane children's books, used for decades to teach children to read (SEEMOTHERMOTHERISVERYNICEMOTHERWILLYOUPLAYWITHJANEMOTHERLAUGHSLAUGHMOTHERLAUGHLA) created a chilling, ironic and staggering contrast between the lives of the whites and those of the blacks in this novel. Shirley Temple, Mary Jane candies, and Jean Harlow hairstyles - you'll find the delicacy of all of them here, both in these characters' reality and in metaphor. While the truth and injustices here were often sobering to read, they were filled with too much truth to rightfully deny or turn away from.

I could spend hours discussing this novel. I could quote from it all day, but I won't do that, because the entire read was poignant and so crisply aware of the color line - the how and the why - that there is no one point that can overshadow another in the message that these words aimed to send. This novel is older than I am, and yet it still rings with such verity, with such biting truth and reality. With The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison cut open the existence of both internalized and externalized racism in America and laid it bare and exposed at our feet. For that, she deserves nothing but reverence and applause, so she will always have that from me.

Anyone who's ever been in doubt of a color line in Black America should read this book. Anyone who's ever questioned, "But why can't I say those words when you say them all the time? But why do you still believe that racism exists? Why can't you just get over it - the past is the past?" should read this book. In fact, just read this book anyway - how about that? :) ***** ...more

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Jun 19, 2018 Sean Barrs rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: postcolonial, i-tried, 1-star-reads

I’ve read a lot of fucked things in literature, though it is extremely rare that I read something so messed up that it makes me hate the book.

It takes a lot to put me off. I read Lolita without any complaints about the paedophilia because sometimes it is necessary to show despicable things in order to create art. I’ve read stage pieces by Sarah Kane which involve genital mutilation and all sorts of brutal sex acts, but, again, it was necessary for the piece. Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus centr ...more

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Jul 17, 2017 Read By RodKelly rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Here is the little black girl. She has dreams and a fertile imagination. She is a potential conduit for excellence in the world. But she is the inheritor of pathological trauma that is centuries old. She is born to parents who are too busy licking their wounds and tending to their own pain to extend anything resembling love in her direction. So she believes she is unlovable, and is subsequently rendered invisible and therefore a perfect target to absorb the abuses of a society of self-hating, op ...more

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Feb 25, 2020 Michael rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2020

Contemplative and saturated with sorrow, The Bluest Eye reflects on the devastating emotional toll of colorism, poverty, and sexism. In her debut novel Morrison explores the hopes and frustrations of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, a destitute Black girl living in Ohio who longs to be blonde-haired and blue-eyed, as well as the inner lives of her family members and fellow townsfolk, whose pasts and presents are full of pain. Misery laces nearly every facet of the story, starkly contrasting the ...more

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Aug 30, 2013 Brian rated it really liked it

Recommended to Brian by: Bill Holtzclaw

I saw this tweet a couple of weeks ago: "Going through life white, male, middle-class and American is like playing a video game on easy mode." For those of us born into this: how many chances do we get to fuck things up and still come out just fine? An almost infinite amount, apparently.

Toni Morrison wants those of us born with that winning life-lotto combo ticket to experience the opposite of that life track in a world that encompasses, in her words, "the far more tragic and disabling conseque ...more

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Oct 29, 2020 Adam Dalva rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Oh my goodness, I loved this book - loved it for the language, of course, Morrison is like Woolf or Forester, in how her sentences can do absolutely anything - but also for the way the plot is structured, for how the central character, Pecola, is the most shown and the least known, and for how the denizens of Lorain, Ohio, even the most immoral ones, are treated with equal measures of sympathy and scrutiny by Morrison. I found myself looking for Pecola, over and over again, and when the narrativ ...more

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Aug 23, 2010 Fabian rated it it was amazing

I wonder who the Mexican Toni Morrison is. Her work is very hard to peg down. It remains a wondrous feat to analyze or attempt to define whatever masterpiece of hers you are reading at the time. Alas, Rest In Power...

A definitive stylist, a poet, Morrison is brilliant. There is one scene deeply ingrained somewhere in the schism that is this beautiful book which will stay with me forever. It involves the main character, a little impressionable girl of color-- & it is through her deep, deplorable ...more

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Feb 23, 2015 Maxwell rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: black-authors

3.5/5 stars

I found The Bluest Eye to be structurally disjointed but fluidly written. Each sentence bled into the next, urging the reader to press on amidst a heartbreaking, convicting story of rejection, self-loathing, and ultimately, complete violation. It's not easy, or particularly enjoyable, to read. But Morrison cracks open this sort of taboo topic, choosing to highlight a character whose story often goes untold: that of an ugly, black girl.

But Pecola, our main character, doesn't even get 3.5/5 stars

I found The Bluest Eye to be structurally disjointed but fluidly written. Each sentence bled into the next, urging the reader to press on amidst a heartbreaking, convicting story of rejection, self-loathing, and ultimately, complete violation. It's not easy, or particularly enjoyable, to read. But Morrison cracks open this sort of taboo topic, choosing to highlight a character whose story often goes untold: that of an ugly, black girl.

But Pecola, our main character, doesn't even get to tell her own story. The novel breaks down into seasons, starting with Autumn, and is narrated by a neighbor girl and her sister. As the story progresses, we get backstories on major characters: Pecola's mother, father, and various people in their hometown of Lorain, Ohio.

While I loved the prose--there's no denying Morrison's skill with words, especially as this is her first novel--I found myself having trouble fully engaging in the story. As Pecola's story unfolds, we realize that she is helpless to deal with the pain she is going through, and she internalizes it. She isn't even helped by the people in her life who should be able to help her, because they have their own pain to deal with.

This isolation Pecola feels kept me at a distance from her, combined with the fact that we don't get to hear from Pecola herself at all. And by the end I was a bit let down. During the afterword of the novel, written by Morrison herself, she says regarding the structure, "My solution--break the narrative into parts that had to be reassembled by the reader--semed to me a good idea, the execution of which does not satisfy me now. Besides, it didn't work: many readers remained touched but not moved."

I think, therein, lies my exact problem with this book. That isn't to say that this book isn't worth reading, or that it doesn't achieve anything that it sets out to achieve. Instead, I felt so detached and confused by the structuring of the story, that I missed out on the emotion that was being expressed.

It's an excellent novel, nonetheless, but it's also a first one; I anticipate in reading more of Morrison, I will grow to understand her writing, as I often do in reading more from the works of an author. And I would argue, as many people recommended to me, it's a good place to start with Morrison. ...more

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Jun 13, 2020 Susanne Strong rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audiobooks, 2020-five-star-books, must-read, favorite-authors

Many tears were shed while reading “The Bluest Eye” by the great Toni Morrison. During this time of turmoil and strife, I went into this read with a heavy heart and it got oh so much heavier. It was however necessary. There is so much to learn and I thank Ms. Morrison for opening my tear-filled eyes.

This novel explores racism, poverty, assault, and so much more. It is a heart-wrenching story about Pecola Breedlove, an African American girl living in Lorain, Ohio in 1941, who desperately wants t Many tears were shed while reading “The Bluest Eye” by the great Toni Morrison. During this time of turmoil and strife, I went into this read with a heavy heart and it got oh so much heavier. It was however necessary. There is so much to learn and I thank Ms. Morrison for opening my tear-filled eyes.

This novel explores racism, poverty, assault, and so much more. It is a heart-wrenching story about Pecola Breedlove, an African American girl living in Lorain, Ohio in 1941, who desperately wants to be beautiful. Even her schoolmates Freida and Claudia, whose lives aren’t exactly easy, would describe Pecola as ugly.

For these African American girls, who are given white dolls, with blond hair and blue eyes, beauty is skewed. Pecola would do anything to have “The Bluest Eye”, to be seen as beautiful. To be loved. For Pecola Breedlove, kind, sweet, lonely, innocent Pecola, recognizes far more than she should at her young age. For Frieda and Claudia, their innocence is slowly taken away bit by bit.

Family, friends, relatives, acquaintances. During this time and place. No one had any idea how their actions were taken. No one stopped to think before they took action. Hate is spewed upon those who did not deserve it. Children. Young girls. Innocents. Simply because of the color of their skin.

So many passages in this novel hit home. They gave me pause.., and they made tears runneth over.

“Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike.”

“And something more. The total absence of human recognition—the glazed separateness. She does not know what keeps his glance suspended.”

“She has seen it lurking in the eyes of all white people. So. The distaste must be for her, her blackness.”

“All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us—all who knew her—felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used—to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength”

“The Bluest Eye” is a character driven novel that will leave you with a heavy heart. I recommend this for a book club and it includes difficult subject matters.
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To the “Pecola’s” and Breonna’s of this world. I am so very sorry. I vow to keep reading and educating myself so that I can do better.

Thank you to Toni Morrison for this incredible novel.

Published on Goodreads and Instagram on 6.13.20. ...more

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Feb 17, 2019 Whitney Atkinson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2019, full-five-stars

tw: domestic abuse, animal abuse & death, incest, pedophilia, rape

wow. this is the first book i've read by morrison and i 100% anticipate i'll read more because every other line is so hard hitting and gorgeously phrased with innovative and genius descriptions, as well as insightful and tragic commentary on why the characters feel and act the way they do. this book's discussion of beauty standards and anger and racism were so relevant and well-articulated. it hit right in the sweet spot of not be ...more

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May 29, 2020 Jean-Luke rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

China, Poland and Miss Marie (also known as The Maginot Line) are surely three of the finest whores in literature. Sure, why not start with that. But they are only three of the gorgeous characters that populate this gorgeous book. This was my first Toni Morrison--it was Toni Morrison's first Toni Morrison--and since she continued writing I will continue reading what she wrote. I initially struggled with this book because I had Pecola in my mind as the protagonist (I officially I hate back cover ...more

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May 21, 2019 Paul Bryant rated it really liked it

Shelves: novels

When I read a history of American literature recently I made a note of the great authors I still hadn’t read yet and here are the ones I listed

Richard Wright
Ralph Ellison
Toni Morrison
Maya Angelou
Alice Walker

Wait a moment, these writers are all African American! What’s going on here? Is this a case of #mybookshelvestoowhite? Even the solitary James Baldwin novel I read was Giovanni’s Room- it happens to be all about European white people.

Well, I think what happened is that I think I thought I al ...more

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May 29, 2009 Sabra rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2009

I just read this today, and the rating system really doesn't apply to my feelings, which are still fresh, on this book : "I like it" "I really liked it", etc. I have NO idea how to rate this book.

I didn't like the book. As the author herself states in the afterward, "...this is a terrible story about things one would rather not know anything about." But at the same time, the story is engrossing, I found the back stories interesting, and really fell in love with the three little girls. Though som ...more

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Apr 25, 2015 Helene Jeppesen rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I feel so bad for not liking this book, because I know I'm in the minority, and because I know it deals with some very very important topics! I think it's important that books like these exist, because we need to remember that problems like these exist.
That being said, I strongly disliked the execution of this story. Nothing in this book inspires hope; it's 100% full of brutality, loss, heartbreak and lots of other heavy and heart-breaking topics, and to be honest, I felt like it was way too ov ...more

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Aug 08, 2010 Connie Kuntz rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Connie by: Sylvia Hoke

Pecola. That's her name.

Her name bothered me the first time I read it. Pecola. How do you even pronounce it. It's...ugly. Slowly, but surely, I understood that was the point. Or at least a point among many wicked-but-important points in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

Pecola herself would never be pretty, would never be understood. No one would ever be able to shorten or lengthen her name into a cute nick. Her hair, her eyes, her countenance, her life, would never be considered more than an in Pecola. That's her name.

Her name bothered me the first time I read it. Pecola. How do you even pronounce it. It's...ugly. Slowly, but surely, I understood that was the point. Or at least a point among many wicked-but-important points in The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.

Pecola herself would never be pretty, would never be understood. No one would ever be able to shorten or lengthen her name into a cute nick. Her hair, her eyes, her countenance, her life, would never be considered more than an insult, not only to herself, but to her people, too.

Pecola, trapped in poverty, was mercilessly teased by her peers, raped and impregnated by her father and judged by her elders. Eventually, Pecola went crazy and was last seen digging through the garbage by her old childhood "friend", one of the narrators of the novel.

The narrators acknowledge the superior tone of The Observer, a concept I had never considered. The listener/watcher/reader is a powerful person, so I will be more careful of what and how I share from now on. Or, maybe just less caring. That's it.

Pecola herself, never experiences self-superiority, which I believe is the first time I have ever noticed such a phenomena. Most characters, especially underdog protagonists, experience some sort of self-superiority (however deluded) at some point in their "character arc." Even when she is coerced/tricked into harming a cat and a dog in two separate but bizarre incidents of what I consider male-domination, she is neither elevated nor deflated by the moment. Instead, she is motivated by achieving superiority by getting blue eyes. That is interesting to me.

All of The Bluest Eye is interesting to me. The cruelty and evil that lurk inside the realm of survival and desire is explored beautifully and almost unbearably. Pecola's desire for having the bluest eyes in the world reminded me of some of my absurd goals and I am once again reminded to reassess my values.

That's not a bad thing to do once in awhile or, in my case, on a regular basis.

...more

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Jul 31, 2017 Thomas rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-for-dmv-bookclub, historical-fiction, lit-outside-of-school

4.5 stars

A powerful and disturbing book about the damaging effects of eurocentric beauty standards and the tremendous negative impacts of racism. My friend and I just talked about this Twitter thread ("is he hot or is he just white with a visible jawline and/or blue eyes?") right before I read The Bluest Eye. Toni Morrison captures this dynamic of internalized racial self-loathing so well. With vivid prose, she interrogates how glorifying white skin and blue eyes harms black girls and turns them ...more

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Dec 11, 2013 Algernon (Darth Anyan) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”

Toni Morrison's debut novel is for me a fitting illustration of the truth behind the Hemingway quote above. A painful, uncomfortable, provocative, depressing story that is nevertheless more honest and real than most of the books I've read this year. In a foreword written two decades after first publication, the author expresses some misgivings about the structure of the novel and about how Pecola, the main characte ...more

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Aug 30, 2013 Aubrey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Aubrey by: Brian

Shelves: nobel-prize-people, pure-power-of-gr, person-of-reality, reality-check, person-of-everything, 1-read-on-hand, r-goodreads, reviewed, 4-star, r-2015

4.5/5

I had my share of body hatred while growing up, but it would be foolish to believe that a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, skinny white girl has the same problems as those who diverge in any of the four descriptives. After all, we are talking a physicality that differs in very few respects from the type idealized by the Nationalist Socialist German Workers' Party, and in the land of the whites and the home of the bleach, that phenotype means power. Just last week, one of my professors commented on 4.5/5

I had my share of body hatred while growing up, but it would be foolish to believe that a blonde-haired, blue-eyed, skinny white girl has the same problems as those who diverge in any of the four descriptives. After all, we are talking a physicality that differs in very few respects from the type idealized by the Nationalist Socialist German Workers' Party, and in the land of the whites and the home of the bleach, that phenotype means power. Just last week, one of my professors commented on her constant well-dressed appearance with "I can't wash this off," scrubbing at her hand as synecdoche for how her African heritage had chosen to display itself. Sixty years ago that choice in clothing was just as politically charged, for to dress well and not be white was an open invitation to getting the living shit beaten out of you. As you can see, the white supremacy is a canny thing, always knowing how to change its skin.

Four to five hundred years or so ago, the science of race was invented to excuse the existence of slavery in the face of religious humanity and social equality. Since then, the country of the United States was invented, taught to children as a "cultural melting pot" that flenses them from schoolyard to mass media and back again. It is an easy process: bully any who diverge into a morass of self-hatred, let others who are of the flock accessorize with the dehumanized divergence, then commercialize until all that is left of a human heritage is white people consumption. Jazz, Hinduism, bindis, yoga, rap, sushi, greeted with raging disgust and vitriolic hatred unless, of course, you're white. Then by all means, consume away. There's no danger in your representation. Only oppression.

It would be allegory if the entire machinery of the US Government didn't single out the chosen sacrifices based on the color of skin and the inheritance of creed, but it does. It would have aged badly if cultural appropriation wasn't an imperialistic practice that takes the existence of others as the latest "fad" for a blonde-haired and blue-eyed persona, but it is. I'm talking dark-skinned girls bleaching their skin, I'm talking the violation of civilizations for the pursuit of a hobby, I'm talking a disconnect between an entire host of souls from their bodies that makes the incest in this book ugly and a white man raping his three-year-old daughter legally acceptable in the US as of 2014. Toni Morrison wrote this book while people were killing themselves to keep themselves aligned with "respectability politics" of white fashion; today, every white person wants dreadlocks. Shit on something long enough and it's yours for the commercial taking, so long, of course, you look a certain way.

If you dehumanize someone because they don't look like blonde-haired blue-eyed white-skinned skinny-assed me, you are utter, fucking, goddamn trash. It's as simple as that. ...more

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Aug 08, 2013 Cheryl rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, fiction, vintage, nobels, mesmerizing, afro-american, fav-authors

“There can’t be anyone, I’m sure, who doesn’t know what it feels like to be disliked, even rejected. Momentarily or for sustained periods of time,” Toni Morrison stated in her author note, as she explained the context of this novel. Imagine a Nobel Laureate reading her work, and then explaining her art. I listened to this via Audible and I was spellbound. Inflections with each character switch and mood, exquisite dialogue performance—I might as well have been in the same room with her.

The bluest “There can’t be anyone, I’m sure, who doesn’t know what it feels like to be disliked, even rejected. Momentarily or for sustained periods of time,” Toni Morrison stated in her author note, as she explained the context of this novel. Imagine a Nobel Laureate reading her work, and then explaining her art. I listened to this via Audible and I was spellbound. Inflections with each character switch and mood, exquisite dialogue performance—I might as well have been in the same room with her.

The bluest eye. Oh what great use of personification. This story, laden with historical and literary context, is narrated by young Claudia and follows three black girls: Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola. Raised in small town Ohio following the Great Depression and during a time laced with blatant racism and segregation, let’s just say, the girls were the bearers of grown folks’ wrath.

Pecola’s parents are indifferent towards her. She must call her mom, Mrs. Breedlove, while the blonde-haired, blue-eyed little girl her mother takes care of, calls her Polly. When Pecola sees the same mother who beats and yells at her oohing and aahing at the little girl, the blue eyes become her way of wanting to be acknowledged. Maybe if she had blue eyes… Later, the bluest eye will play a role after Pecola goes through a horrific ordeal and we get to hear from her directly.

Pauline Breedlove (Pecola’s mother) on the other hand, loves her job as a housekeeper because she gets to escape her life with the abusive husband, poverty, and invisibility. In her world, no one notices or acknowledges her: the black woman. Shopping for her family is a pain. But in her white employers’ world where she must purchase items and make decisions on their behalf, vendors respect her duty and title. At these moments within the story, Claudia’s first person narration veers to a third-person narrator once you start to get into the adults’ heads (like crazy Cholly’s, for example) and more mature issues are raised.

Toni Morrison started this story in 1962—working on it while getting her MA. In 1965, it started to take the shape of a book. In elementary school, she had a friend who told her that she wished she had blue eyes. Very blue eyes in a very dark skin? She was repelled by her friend’s desire. With the book she tried to “hit the raw nerve of racial self contempt, expose it, then soothe it.”

I’ve never run across an author who writes like Toni Morrison. While reading two of her works simultaneously this week, (I also read Paradise) I noticed her signature style. It’s the good kind of expectation, like buying a Coach purse knowing that there are certain things about it that will not let you down. The lyrical syntax is prolific, the narrator voice oblique, and the story structure will take leaps and bounds.

The second half of this book was my favorite. In the beginning, there is a certain voice that pierces the narrative throughout and I wondered what it was (the white house and Jane playing). Towards the end, I understood the art as I heard from Pecola (in a weird, artistic kind of way) and it was a deeply emotional moment. ...more

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Jun 05, 2020 Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: modern-classics

I've had a look, both on Goodreads & the internet, & I can't find the cover of my ebook edition. I just know it was published post 1993, because it contains the afterward written by Morrison then, in which she proves to be one of her most severe critics. Morrison thought that at the times she lacked the narrative skill to tell the story the way she wanted. I will respectfully disagree, as while Percola's story is terrible in the sense of the almost unrelenting pain & bleakness, it is beautiful w ...more

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Sep 04, 2015 KB rated it did not like it

Shelves: in-your-local-trash-bin

This is going to be a very; very long critical review of a so-called 'African American classic'...So there you have been warned...

First, I want to say that I didn't have to read this book for a school/college project, or anything. I had just finished reading the memoir "Black Boy" by Richard Wright (which has turned into my favorite most relatable black memoirs of all time). This was given to me by a close relative who loves reading too. Every other black person I've seen (especially the consci ...more

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Feb 06, 2019 Reggie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-favorites

The greatest writer I've ever read, an icon, the G.O.A.T., started her literary career in a fashion that is more brilliant than I even imagined.

This is a novel that speaks volumes in an era where certain people will still try & blame the young girls involved instead of an R&B singer who will remain unnamed.

Further thoughts to come... ...more

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About Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

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Toni Morrison (born Chloe Ardelia Wofford) was an American author, editor, and professor who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature for being an author "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality."

Her novels are known for their epic themes, vivid dialogue, and richly detailed African American characters; among the best k ...more

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“Love is never any better than the lover. ” — 425 likes

“Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe. There is no gift for the beloved. The lover alone possesses his gift of love. The loved one is shorn, neutralized, frozen in the glare of the lover’s inward eye.” — 397 likes

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