Toni Morrison: The Bluest Eye (Hardcover, 2000, Alfred A. Knopf)
Hardcover, 215 pages
English language
Published June 8, 2000 by Alfred A. Knopf.
The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature.
It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment. (front flap)
Toni Morrison weaves a story that deals heavily with the topic of beauty. There were some scenes in this book that were incredibly difficult to read, including scenes of the sexual assault of children. Toni Morrison is a really talented writer, and this book packs a serious punch.
As Toni lays out, "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."
A truly devastating book in almost every regard.
