4.5/5“Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.” Toni Morrison, The Bluest EyeI have several reading goals for 2019 ~~ get some big books off my Want to Read list, explore more Asian writing, and visit authors I have missed along my reading journey. One of the most glaring omissions on this list was Toni Morriso...

When we finished this book, about half the class--- including me--- were infuriated at Morrison for humanizing certain characters that caused Pecola to suffer the most. "Is she saying what they did was okay?! Is she telling us they weren't to blame and we should feel sorry for them?!" I remember writing my "objective" and "tone-neutral" in-class essay while trying to stifle my own feelings of resentment. I know now that the answers to those two questions were no and no. What Morrison wanted us t...

...his mother did not like him to play with niggers. She had explained to him the difference between colored people and niggers. They were easily identifiable. Colored people were neat and quiet; niggers were dirty and loud...The line between colored and nigger was not always clear; subtle and telltale signs threatened to erode it, and the watch had to be constant.While I was not the biggest fan of Morrison's style in this novel, I did fully appreciate the dagger-sharp insight that she brought t...

Many tears were shed while reading “The Bluest Eye” by the great Toni Morrison. During this time of turmoil and strife, I went into this read with a heavy heart and it got oh so much heavier. It was however necessary. There is so much to learn and I thank Ms. Morrison for opening my tear-filled eyes. This novel explores racism, poverty, assault, and so much more. It is a heart-wrenching story about Pecola Breedlove, an African American girl living in Lorain, Ohio in 1941, who desperately wants t...

I feel so bad for not liking this book, because I know I'm in the minority, and because I know it deals with some very very important topics! I think it's important that books like these exist, because we need to remember that problems like these exist. That being said, I strongly disliked the execution of this story. Nothing in this book inspires hope; it's 100% full of brutality, loss, heartbreak and lots of other heavy and heart-breaking topics, and to be honest, I felt like it was way too ov...

I saw this tweet a couple of weeks ago: "Going through life white, male, middle-class and American is like playing a video game on easy mode." For those of us born into this: how many chances do we get to fuck things up and still come out just fine? An almost infinite amount, apparently. Toni Morrison wants those of us born with that winning life-lotto combo ticket to experience the opposite of that life track in a world that encompasses, in her words, "the far more tragic and disabling conseque...

well, i'm experiencing severe bookface fatigue and wasn't gonna report on this until i read this cool-as-shit bookster's review:http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/36813she checked out the reviews on amazon for the bluest eye and listed some excerpts:"Toni Morrison is the most overrated author in America, it's only because of Oprah (the most overrated "personality" in America") that she is popular." "You know, I know blacks have had a hard time in this world...I'm not naive...but there's a right

Just a few days ago I happened to have a conversation with someone (quite a 'well-read' person too) who said quite casually, almost in an offhand manner, how he found books written by women 'uninteresting'. On prodding him for the reason behind his 'disinterest', he replied that 'books written by women just do not engage' him. I didn't have the heart to ask him why a second time.And there it sat between us, this knowledge of his disdain for women writers (for some hitherto unknown reason), like

I wonder who the Mexican Toni Morrison is. Her work is very hard to peg down. It remains a wondrous feat to analyze or attempt to define whatever masterpiece of hers you are reading at the time. Alas, Rest In Power...A definitive stylist, a poet, Morrison is brilliant. There is one scene deeply ingrained somewhere in the schism that is this beautiful book which will stay with me forever. It involves the main character, a little impressionable girl of color-- & it is through her deep, deplorable

3.5/5 starsI found The Bluest Eye to be structurally disjointed but fluidly written. Each sentence bled into the next, urging the reader to press on amidst a heartbreaking, convicting story of rejection, self-loathing, and ultimately, complete violation. It's not easy, or particularly enjoyable, to read. But Morrison cracks open this sort of taboo topic, choosing to highlight a character whose story often goes untold: that of an ugly, black girl. But Pecola, our main character, doesn't even get

Quintessential Morrison. The Bluest Eye is powerful yet opaque. This is a devastating story about internalized hatred, the hegemony of white notions of beautify, and a desperation so pervasive that sexual violence against a child is only one part of the story rather than the pivot around which everything else turns. The evil here is symptomatic and not the cause. This isn’t a light read, but it is vitally important and a cornerstone in the Morrison canon.

Contemplative and saturated with sorrow, The Bluest Eye reflects on the devastating emotional toll of colorism, poverty, and sexism. In her debut novel Morrison explores the hopes and frustrations of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, a destitute Black girl living in Ohio who longs to be blonde-haired and blue-eyed, as well as the inner lives of her family members and fellow townsfolk, whose pasts and presents are full of pain. Misery laces nearly every facet of the story, starkly contrasting the...

Here is the little black girl. She has dreams and a fertile imagination. She is a potential conduit for excellence in the world. But she is the inheritor of pathological trauma that is centuries old. She is born to parents who are too busy licking their wounds and tending to their own pain to extend anything resembling love in her direction. So she believes she is unlovable, and is subsequently rendered invisible and therefore a perfect target to absorb the abuses of a society of self-hating, op...

"Being a minority in both caste and class, we moved about anyway on the hem of life, struggling to consolidate our weaknesses and hang on, or to creep singly up into the major folds of the garment. Our peripheral existence, however, was something we had learned to deal with--probably because it was abstract."- Toni Morrison, The Bluest EyeI'm rereading Morrison's books in chronological order in 2016 and I created a private group here on Goodreads for a few of us who are interested in doing the

(Book 365 from 1001 books) - The Bluest Eye, Toni MorrisonThe Bluest Eye is a novel written by Toni Morrison in 1970. Morrison, a single mother of two sons, wrote the novel while she taught at Howard University. The novel is set in 1941 and centers around the life of a young African-American girl named Pecola who grows up during the years following the Great Depression in Lorain, Ohio. Due to Pecola's harsh characteristics and dark skin, she is consistently regarded as "ugly". As a result, she d...

Toni Morrison doesn't get the respect she deserves and has rightfully earned. I think that part of this has to do with the unfortunate connotations people have regarding Oprah's Book Club and part of it stems from, if not outright racism and misogyny, than the racist and misogynist assumptions that Morrison is popular only because she is a nonwhite woman, liberal guilt etc. The latter is false: Toni Morrison has won the Pulitzer and the Nobel because she is an excellent author.N.B. - Before I ge...

Toni Morrison is one of my favorite authors. I discovered her writing with Beloved for which have a copy signed by her at a reading in Brooklyn of Jazz decades ago. In The Bluest Eye, she looks at the intersection of racism, self-hatred, poverty, and sexuality with realism and her beautifully descriptive writing style. The book starts off with one of Toni Morisson's typically powerful opening lines:Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it

I’ve read a lot of fucked things in literature, though it is extremely rare that I read something so messed up that it makes me hate the book.It takes a lot to put me off. I read Lolita without any complaints about the paedophilia because sometimes it is necessary to show despicable things in order to create art. I’ve read stage pieces by Sarah Kane which involve genital mutilation and all sorts of brutal sex acts, but, again, it was necessary for the piece. Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus centr...

tw: domestic abuse, animal abuse & death, incest, pedophilia, rapewow. this is the first book i've read by morrison and i 100% anticipate i'll read more because every other line is so hard hitting and gorgeously phrased with innovative and genius descriptions, as well as insightful and tragic commentary on why the characters feel and act the way they do. this book's discussion of beauty standards and anger and racism were so relevant and well-articulated. it hit right in the sweet spot of not be...

Oh my goodness, I loved this book - loved it for the language, of course, Morrison is like Woolf or Forester, in how her sentences can do absolutely anything - but also for the way the plot is structured, for how the central character, Pecola, is the most shown and the least known, and for how the denizens of Lorain, Ohio, even the most immoral ones, are treated with equal measures of sympathy and scrutiny by Morrison. I found myself looking for Pecola, over and over again, and when the narrativ...