Who Would Like This Book:
Prepare to be moved! 'The Bluest Eye' is an unforgettable, beautifully written novel that delves deeply into race, beauty, and self-worth through the eyes of a young Black girl in 1940s Ohio. Toni Morrison’s poetic prose and shifting perspectives make this a thought-provoking read. Fans of literary fiction, socially conscious stories, and those who appreciate rich character exploration will find a powerful experience here. If you enjoy books that challenge societal norms and get you thinking about empathy, identity, and the power of community, this one’s for you.
Who May Not Like This Book:
This is not a light or comfortable read. The novel tackles very heavy topics like racism, child abuse, incest, and self-loathing, and its bleak tone can be emotionally draining. Some readers find the shifting timelines and multiple narrators confusing, and the heartbreaking lack of hope or closure isn’t for everyone. If you’re looking for a hopeful or uplifting story, or prefer more straightforward storytelling, you may find this one tough to get through.
About:
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is a powerful and tragic story that delves into the themes of racial tension, self-hatred, abuse, and societal beauty standards. The narrative follows Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl who longs for blue eyes in the belief that it will make her beautiful and accepted. Set against a backdrop of poverty, racism, and violence, the novel explores the devastating impact of systemic racism and self-loathing on individuals' lives, particularly children growing up in a harsh and uncaring world.
Toni Morrison's writing style in The Bluest Eye is described as astonishing, beautiful, and poetic. She skillfully weaves together intricate details of tragic events and characters, creating a narrative that is both heartbreaking and thought-provoking. Through the eyes of children, Morrison paints a stark and painful depiction of the consequences of passive racism, societal indifference, and the longing for acceptance and beauty in a world that often denies it to those who need it the most.
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Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
The novel contains heavy themes including racism, child abuse, rape, incest, and domestic violence.
From The Publisher:
Read the searing first novel from the celebrated author of Beloved, which immerses us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family in post-Depression 1940s Ohio.
Unlovely and unloved, Pecola prays each night for blue eyes like those of her privileged white schoolfellows. At once intimate and expansive, unsparing in its truth-telling, The Bluest Eye shows how the past savagely defines the present. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison's virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterised her writing.
'She revealed the sins of her nation, while profoundly elevating its canon. She suffused the telling of blackness with beauty, whilst steering us away from the perils of the white gaze. That's why she told her stories. And why we will never, ever stop reading them' Afua Hirsch
'Discovering a writer like Toni Morrison is rarest of pleasures' Washington Post
'When she arrived, with her first novel, The Bluest Eye, she immediately re-ordered the American literary landscape' Ben Okri
Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction
Ratings (84)
Incredible (20) | |
Loved It (38) | |
Liked It (14) | |
It Was OK (8) | |
Did Not Like (3) | |
Hated It (1) |
Reader Stats (186):
Read It (96) | |
Currently Reading (2) | |
Want To Read (71) | |
Did Not Finish (2) | |
Not Interested (15) |
5 comment(s)
A devastating book about the racial self-loathing pervasive for Black people in a world that routinely celebrates whiteness (implicitly or explicitly). The theming was so tight—it showed up EVERYwhere. Important context: this was a book about young black girls, and told by a young black girl, and written during the civil upheavals of the late 1960s. These stories have been told again, and perhaps more successfully, but this was one of the first to put the telling of a young girl's destruction in the hands of women.
My copy had an afterward that Toni Morrison wrote in the 90s, that offered some great insight into what she'd intended and the things she felt did and did not work.
Just wasn’t getting into it
The rawest, most intense books I've ever read. It makes readers uncomfortably intimate with the characters that makes you want to sympathize with them. But the morality, or lack thereof, within them makes everything so much harder. This is a book where an 18+ reader limit is less of a recommendation and more of "for your own good." But its a powerful book that should be read.
I do not really have words to describe how good this book is. I was planning to read it slowly alongside some other "lighter" books, and simply devoured it in two days, quickly abandoning the other books in favor of this one. Morrison is definitely one of the best writers around. This is a bit more direct and heavy-handed than Beloved, at moments you feel like Morrison herself sneaks in to add some social commentary. Despite that, I consider this still an historical and literary masterpiece, reading like a beautiful lyrical poem that still manages to punch you in the gut repeatedly with the truth.
Pecola deserves better, wish I could get a deeper dive into her point of view.
What can you read after
The Bluest Eye?
About the Author:
Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. She was the author of many novels, including The Bluest Eye, Sula, Beloved, Paradise and Love. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize for her fiction and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honour, in 2012 by Barack Obama. Toni Morrison died on 5 August 2019 at the age of eighty-eight.
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