The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
1970
Around 225 pages
Our first Toni Morrison! She is going to make me feel way too many things. I guess we are starting with inferiority, because this debut novel is incredible and she had no problem finding her voice on the page.
Our story is narrated by nine-year-old Claudia MacTeer, who lives with her sister, parents, a tenant, and Pecola Breedlove, whose house was recently burned down by her abusive father. Pecola wishes for blue eyes, which she sees as a way of achieving the ideal whiteness propagated by her community. I'm not usually the biggest fan of child narrators, but I enjoyed following Pecola's story from a slight distance. And Morrison is realistic in her depictions of children, while still being respectful of their intellect.
Morrison's novels are hard on the soul, so I have to space out my reads. I found this more depressing than I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, which definitely ends on a more hopeful note. But Morrison did an excellent job representing internalized racism in Pecola, who struggles to reconcile her religious beliefs in an omnipotent god with the reality of living as a minority.
So welcome to the List Toni! I look forward to you kicking me in the feels again and again.
RATING: *****
Interesting Facts:
34th-most banned book in the United States 1990–1999, the 15th-most banned book 2000–2009, and the 10th-most banned book 2010-2019.
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