The Bluest Eye

"Morrison models that capability here in this great novel, and reminds us that the first move in any assessment should be sympathy."

"Well, this is another debut, first published in 1971. If you’re trying to talk to somebody who has not really thought about what racism is, this book explains it. It is the story of a young, very, very disadvantaged black girl in rural Ohio in the years following the Great Depression. She has no power, a horrible life, is abused, and voiceless. Pecola looks at another little girl who is the daughter of her foster parents, a child with white skin and blue eyes, and in her child’s mind she thinks: If I only had blue eyes, people would be nice to me. She doesn’t see it as white people having one life and Black people having no rights or agency. She sees it as a very simple thing: If only I had differently coloured eyes, I’d be okay. It’s an incredibly painful novel to read. It’s about dislocation, it’s about tragedy. It’s about the impossibility of certain people being able to lift themselves out of the position they’re in, because they genuinely have no power. When I re-read the novel, it becomes richer every time as my knowledge of the world and sophistication in thinking has grown. It’s very hard to have a novel with a lead character who is not powerful, but the quietness and lack of voice is actually what fills the novel itself. Toni Morrison was a genius, and would go on to write other novels that were much more famous and celebrated, not least of all, Beloved . But I would say that this novel goes to the heart of what it means to be treated differently, treated unjustly. Yes, absolutely. Another issue with writing women back into history is that there is a pressure to only include the women that you approve of or agree with. But if we want a 360º history that tells the story of everybody, then we must put back the women we don’t agree with, those who did awful things as well as those we admire, the sinners as well as the saints. It’s also important to understand that some women did extraordinary, significant things, who also had appalling views on different matters. The world is complicated, nuanced, and we must acknowledge that. People contain contradictions."

"The best way to get introduced to Toni Morrison as a novelist is to discover the themes, narrative styles, and ideas that were top of her mind at the beginning of her career as an author. She began The Bluest Eye as an undergraduate student but did not complete it until she returned to her writing after her divorce. The Bluest Eye captures some of her early concerns about the intersection of race, class, and gender. Part of the attraction of the novel is that it resonates with the concerns of Black women and girls, how we navigate our lives with an acute awareness of the disregard and disrespect directed toward Black individuals, families and communities. The novel begins with an excerpt from a Dick and Jane primer, which is more significant than many critics have acknowledged. Those primers were also available at the library and in people’s homes, and the novel illustrates the image they engendered in the consciousness of a young Black girl. Against the backdrop of those primers and the ways in which they contributed to the racial imaginary is Pecola Breedlove, the novel’s young female protagonist, who lives in abject poverty. The first words of that primer connect Toni Morrison’s thinking about race as a construct replete with contradictions between idealized representations of the white world as perfect and the reality of the lived world that Black people inhabit under the influence of racial oppression. Readers can see, as early as that first novel, the kind of cultural work the narrative is doing. Part of such work in The Bluest Eye is foregrounding the intersection of race and gender, along with how that intersection mitigates a sense of belonging for a community’s most vulnerable population: Black girls. Pecola was based on an actual girl Morrison remembered from her own childhood, who thought if she had blue eyes, she would be attractive. Morrison said she grew up in the kind of home where she would never have thought such a thing, but she wanted to explore the devastating psychological implications of a young Black girl’s internalization of racial oppression and how that internalization affected her consciousness and sense of belonging. Although Claudia MacTeer, the narrator of the story, brings a more positive perspective toward her own racial identity—as a spectator to the devastating effects of racism, sexual violence, and poverty on Pecola Breedlove—she begins the narrative with the words “Quiet as it’s kept,” and reveals the ways in which the narrative is replete with taboo subjects people would rather avoid. Claudia’s family not only takes in Pecola and her mother after they are evicted from their home and put “outdoors,” but she provides a form of running commentary on the tragedy of the racism, sexual violence, and oppression that result in Pecola’s demise. Because the novel includes incest, rape, and impregnation by her father, Pecola’s demise is that much more tragic and difficult for many readers. In fact, some school districts have attempted to ban the book because of these topics, but Morrison was unafraid of such criticism, convinced as she was that there are forms of cultural work and truth-telling that artists alone must do—regardless of how some readers may respond. That’s a wonderful question. Morrison didn’t put white people at the center of her novels, but that doesn’t mean they are absent or unwelcome. Instead, she writes to welcome all readers into her novels on their own terms and invites them to rethink and reimagine their preconceived notions about themselves and the other and to engage with ways of knowing she knew had been “discredited.” She once discussed that her goal as a writer was to leave spaces for the reader to come into the text. She saw herself creating an open door to a text that would welcome readers in, regardless of their background. She knew that you don’t have to have had an experience to appreciate a book. I’ve always been intrigued by how racial dynamics in this country affect the concept of reading. In school, Black students have not had the luxury of feeling exempt from reading books by and about white people. Morrison always challenged such thinking as a consequence of white supremacist thinking and the racial hierarchies of value and access established to determine what literature deserves to be read, taught, and studied. She was always eager to see where the spaces for the reader are and where the reader would enter the text at spaces she could not anticipate. More importantly, however, she was attempting to create spaces for readers who had not seen their humanity or vernacular ways of using language acknowledged or represented in ways that did justice to who they were. Seeking to disrupt the normalization of whiteness as central, she created spaces for Black readers to see themselves at the center of their own narratives, and she invited all other readers to come in as well. For Morrison, the work of reading requires this willingness to consider the text in terms of its nuanced, cultural specificity and its diverse, complex humanity."

"For no-weight-gain inspiration, I reread aloud the first chapters of certain favorite novels."

"When I came across these works as a young reader, I so deeply wanted to understand how these writers had arrived at these stories."

"I really enjoyed diving back into it. As often happens, teaching a book, talking about it with young people, is the best way to fall in love with it."

"Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye.""

"Toni Morrison (“The Bluest Eye”) got me out of bed"

"I can't say why I waited so long to read them, but I'm glad I've read them now at this time in my life. I think I understand them better than I would have at, say, 19."