A heart-breaking book about Racism – The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison | Book Review
What is the story?
This is the story of Pecola, an African American girl, who according to the author is the ugliest black child in the neighborhood. Pecola only ever wished for one thing – blue eyes. Blue eyes, because she saw kids with golden hair, fair skin and blue eyes get the best respect, look the prettiest, and be showered with attention and compliments.
But she ended up being sexually abused by her father and thus getting pregnant. And she did get her blue eyes. But those blue eyes then drove her to madness.
Author
Toni Morrison
Publisher
Vintage
Genre
Classic/Historical Fiction
Number of Pages
212
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Why was it banned?
It was banned because of sexually explicit content, bad language and depiction of child abuse.
Why I am unable to decide whether I like this book or not?
First off this is not an easy book to read. The story is hard to digest. So is the writing.
Then the chapter titles are repetitive words, cut-off words, and whole phrases with no spaces. Maybe I’m dumb but I didn’t understand the use of this style.
We are taken through flashbacks into the stories of Pecola’s parents Cholly and Pauline. Those transitions are not easy either.
When we begin reading the story with Pecola comes to stay with Claudia, who narrates a major portion of the story, and her elder sister, Freida. There’s a story of Pecola starting her periods, I felt like that was the present tense of the story. But then it wasn’t.
Also, Pecola’s father impregnating her is a disgusting act in itself, but I was more disappointed by the fact that the author justified that he may have done it because he never had parents and due to an abuse incident in his adolescence.
The sentiment and central feeling with which the story is written is very clear – racism. The oppression of the American blacks by the American whites, and the black people’s obsession with accepting white standards of beauty.
The story is too heartbreaking and at the end of it you cannot help but say “Poor Girl”.
So please tell me what I should make of the book.
I read this for Uncorked Reading Challenge 2021 – Banned Book from the 21st Century
Toni Morrison
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 known are her novels The Bluest Eye , Song of Solomon , and Beloved , which won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1988. In 2001 she was named one of "The 30 Most Powerful Women in America" by Ladies' Home Journal.
Top Quotes from The Bluest Eye
“Love is never any better than the lover. ”
“Anger is better. There is a sense of being in anger. A reality and presence. An awareness of worth. It is a lovely surging.”
“Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.”
“Lonely was much better than alone.”
“We mistook violence for passion, indolence for leisure, and thought recklessness was freedom.”
“But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer.”
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