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 to be beautiful. Even her schoolmates Freida and Claudia, whose lives aren’t exactly easy, would describe Pecola as ugly.

For these African American girls, who are given white dolls, with blond hair and blue eyes, beauty is skewed. Pecola would do anything to have “The Bluest Eye”, to be seen as beautiful. To be loved. For Pecola Breedlove, kind, sweet, lonely, innocent Pecola, recognizes far more than she should at her young age. For Frieda and Claudia, their innocence is slowly taken away bit by bit.

Family, friends, relatives, acquaintances. During this time and place. No one had any idea how their actions were taken. No one stopped to think before they took action. Hate is spewed upon those who did not deserve it. Children. Young girls. Innocents. Simply because of the color of their skin.

So many passages in this novel hit home. They gave me pause.., and they made tears runneth over.

“Long hours she sat looking in the mirror, trying to discover the secret of the ugliness, the ugliness that made her ignored or despised at school, by teachers and classmates alike.”

“And something more. The total absence of human recognition—the glazed separateness. She does not know what keeps his glance suspended.”

“She has seen it lurking in the eyes of all white people. So. The distaste must be for her, her blackness.”

“All of our waste which we dumped on her and which she absorbed. And all of our beauty, which was hers first and which she gave to us. All of us—all who knew her—felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking dreams we used—to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt. We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength”

“The Bluest Eye” is a character driven novel that will leave you with a heavy heart. I recommend this for a book club and it includes difficult subject matters.
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To the “Pecola’s” and Breonna’s of this world. I am so very sorry. I vow to keep reading and educating myself so that I can do better.

Thank you to Toni Morrison for this incredible novel.

Published on Goodreads and Instagram on 6.13.20.

Please note: I listened to the audiobook narrated by the author, not Ruby Dee.

This is a book about a child who wants to be beautiful, and that means to have blue eyes. She is black.

If you choose to read this book you should be aware that although the writing is exceptional, it is rarely cheerful:

The first twigs are thin, green and supple. They bend in a complete circle but will not break. Their delicate showy hopefulness shooting from forsythia and lilac bushes meant only a change in whipping style. They beat us differently in the spring. Instead of the dull pain of a winter strap there were these new green switches that lost their sting long after the whipping was over. There was a nervous meanness in these long twigs that made us long for the steady stroke of the strap or the firm but honest slap of a hairbrush. Even now for me spring is shot through with the remembered ache of switchings and forsythia holds no cheer. Sunk in the grass of an empty lot on a spring Saturday I split the stems of milkweed and thought about ants and peach pits and death and where the world went when I closed my eyes. (Chapter entitled Spring)

Don’t look for hope or cheer or ever a glimpse of sunshine. Isn’t usually spring coupled with thoughts of birth and life? Here death is pondered. Here the lovely flowering branches of forsythia in spring are used as a means of inflicting physical child abuse.

After listening to page after page depicting human depravity I sought to find one passage that imparted hope, compassion, the nice things that life affords human beings. Isn’t a book imbalanced if only the negative is shown? In this entire book I found two passages. Only two, and I am not so sure one of them can qualify, it being the physical euphoria implicit in satisfying sex. The other was the wonder of enjoying a hunk of watermelon on a hot summer day. The blue sky, the sweetness of the juice, the feel of such a moment is beautifully written. Yes, this author can write, I just wish she could occasionally use her talent to point out the nice things life affords us. Life consists of both the horrible and the wonderful, for all of us, even those who are the worst off. The picture Morrison draws for us is imbalanced.

The author is extremely articulate:

She succumbed to her earlier dreams. 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 dissolution. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it and collected self-contempt by the heap. She forgot lust and simple caring-for. She regarded love as possessive mating and romance as the goal of the spirit. It would be for her a well-spring from which she would draw the most destructive emotions, deceiving the lover and seeking to imprison the beloved, curtailing freedom in every way.

Although the writing is articulate, I object to the way the analytical, “civilized” language is used to debase all aspects of the characters and their lives. The dialogs are simple, but they are interspersed with passages as that above. In the audiobook, the very slow narration by the author accentuates the importance of each word. Clearly she wants us to reflect on the imparted message. To understand this text, the narration must be slow. You need this time to absorb the significance of each phrase.

So what is the message of this book? It is the value and the importance of self-esteem and that friends and family must actively strengthen, encourage and support a child’s intrinsic worth. Self-esteem, of course at a balanced level, is a healthy trait. Those who lack a feisty character, those who are at a disadvantage given their youth, gender and race, those who have no support from friends or parents, those who are constantly criticized, never praised, never shown that they are wonderful just in themselves, can neither be loved or love others. They are doomed. They will go under. Yes, I agree, but I would have preferred that the author used her remarkable talent and writing ability to show both the horribleness and wonder of life and people. The lines read as poetry, but so very depressing. Human beings use each other; we are depraved and filthy, rarely do we act compassionately. Is that how we always are? I cannot believe that. I will not be reading another book by this author. Even the message is obvious.

4.5 stars

A powerful and disturbing book about the damaging effects of eurocentric beauty standards and the tremendous negative impacts of racism. My friend and I just talked about this Twitter thread ("is he hot or is he just white with a visible jawline and/or blue eyes?") right before I read The Bluest Eye. Toni Morrison captures this dynamic of internalized racial self-loathing so well. With vivid prose, she interrogates how glorifying white skin and blue eyes harms black girls and turns them against one another. Through developing the main characters of this book, the Breedlove family, in a rich and detailed way, Morrison also investigates the repercussions of intergenerational trauma, rape and incest, and more. My heart hurt so much for these characters even as my mind admired Morrison's skill as a writer. She holds nothing back in her books, and neither should we as we fight to diversify our media and show how all bodies deserve love and respect, not just white ones, thin ones, etc. Highly recommended to Morrison fans and to those who care about societal beauty ideals, race and the family, and the social transmission of trauma and abuse.

Η Πέκολα Μπρήντλαβ, ένα μαύρο κοριτσάκι, μεγάλωνε με τη βεβαιότητα ότι ήταν άσχημη. Και προσευχόταν να αποκτήσει γαλάζια μάτια, τα γαλάζια μάτια ενός λευκού κοριτσιού, γιατί πάντα πίστευε πως αν τα μάτια της ήταν διαφορετικά, ‘όμορφα’, θα ‘ταν διαφορετική και η ίδια, θα ήταν αλλιώτικος ο κόσμος ή, έστω, ο τρόπος που θα τον έβλεπε πια, ίσως να ‘ταν κι η μητέρα της κι ο πατέρας της αλλιώς.

«Κάθε νύχτα, ο κόσμος να χαλούσε, εκείνη προσευχόταν ν’ αποκτήσει γαλάζια μάτια. Για ένα χρόνο είχε προσευχηθεί πυρετωδώς. Αν και είχε αποθαρρυνθεί λιγάκι, διατηρούσε τις ελπίδες της. Το να αποκτήσει κάτι τόσο θαυμαστό όσο αυτό, απαιτούσε πολύ, πολύ καιρό».

Το πρώτο μυθιστόρημα της Toni Morrison (The Bluest Eye, 1971) διαδραματίζεται στον τόπο που γεννήθηκε η συγγραφέας, το Λορέιν του Οχάιο, σε μια εποχή που οι ταξικοί διαχωρισμοί είναι διακριτοί και η κοινωνία ‘λευκοκρατείται’ (και ανδροκρατείται)∙ που οι γυναίκες στις γειτονιές των μαύρων γράφονται σε παιδαγωγικές σχολές και σχολές οικιακής οικονομίας και μαθαίνουν πώς να κάνουν τέλεια τις δουλειές των λευκών: οικοκυρικά για να ετοιμάζουν το φαγητό τους, και παιδαγωγική για να διδάσκουν στα μαύρα παιδιά τους την υπακοή και την πειθαρχία∙ που ακόμη και μέσα στις κοινότητες των μαύρων οι άνθρωποι διακρίνονται σε έγχρωμους και νέγρους: οι έγχρωμοι είναι καθαροί και ήσυχοι, οι νέγροι βρώμικοι και φωνακλάδες.

Στο πλαίσιο αυτό, η Toni Morrison διηγείται την ιστορία της Πέκολα Μπρήντλαβ που μεγαλώνει ανάμεσα σε έναν πατέρα που δεν έχει ιδέα τι σημαίνει να ανατρέφεις παιδιά (μην έχοντας δει ποτέ ένα γονιό να ανατρέφει τον ίδιο) κι αναζητά την ευτυχία στο αλκοόλ, και μια μητέρα που ξενοδουλεύει στα σπίτια των λευκών για να τα βγάζει πέρα. Η Πέκολα, νιώθοντας πως την αγνοούν ή τη σιχαίνονται στο σχολείο, πασχίζει να αναζητήσει το μυστικό της ασχήμιας της. Κι ονειρεύεται να αποκτήσει τα πιο γαλάζια μάτια του κόσμου, για να ζήσει τη ζωή ενός κοριτσιού με δέρμα λευκό, να αναδυθεί από την κόλαση που την έχει καταδικάσει το μαύρο της δέρμα. Τη φρίκη που φωλιάζει στην καρδιά της Πέκολα και γέννησε τον πόθο της να ζήσει τη ζωή ενός άλλου (λευκού) κοριτσιού θα διαδεχτεί η είσοδός της στον κόσμο της τρέλας.

Με τα Γαλάζια Μάτια η Morrison συστήθηκε στο αναγνωστικό κοινό, προκαλώντας, λόγω του σοκαριστικού περιεχομένου του συγγραφικού της ντεμπούτου, αμφιλεγόμενα συναισθήματα. Για την ίδια τη Morrison, μια από τις πιο εμβληματικές εκπροσώπους της αμερικανικής λογοτεχνίας σήμερα (Nobel Prize in Literature, 1993), ήταν απλώς ένα ακόμη βιβλίο που ήθελε να διαβάσει, αλλά δεν υπήρχε. Για μένα, θα είναι πάντα εκείνο το βιβλίο που είχα δωρίσει στο κορίτσι μου το 1996 (θεωρώντας από όσα έλεγε η περίληψη στο εξώφυλλο του βιβλίου ότι, λίγο πολύ, θα πραγματεύεται καταστάσεις ευτυχίας!), που δεν ξέρω αν το διάβασε ποτέ, αλλά θέλω να ελπίζω ότι δεν το έκανε τότε.

I read this book several times since early 2000s.

Racism…. Hurts.

I first read Professor Morrison's powerful indictment of how the oppressed can be oppressors in her landmark first novel while I was an undergraduate taking a course on African American literature.

Though I had read Song of Solomon, beforehand, this is the Morrison that I found most upsetting and have had a hard time processing because of what whiteness, power and privilege can do to someone’s psyche when seen as less than. It’s completely heartbreaking.

I was awed by how her language was biting, coarse, languid and ethereal by reading her unforgettable writing.

I was seduced at how shocking and beautiful her words were, so when I became an educator, in the last two decades or so, young scholars were mesmerized and stunned as I was to have read something so bold.

Over 20 years later, and after having seen her read live in 2015 and 2019 during the last years of her life, I reread this novel in one sitting.

Not only did I feel how electric her language was after all those years, but the context of the book had changed considerably for me.

The themes of this novel are as relevant as they were, from the 1930s in which it's set, to the late 1960s, early 1970s on which it was written and published; and even more now- in the complicated and violent world of a post Obama, Biden and Trump era, black lives have been continuously destroyed just for being black and racism is just as horrible and degrading as its always been.

However, the story of Pecola Breedlove, an innocent girl whose obsession with whiteness and self hate is something that lives with anyone who's ever felt terrible about themselves.

The way townspeople shunned her, made fun of her, and scapegoated her is a cruel metaphor that society is willing to be bystanders acknowledging that awful and racist things happen, especially to the weak and passive.

Since Pecola is so down and low in the social hierarchy, her pain and sorrow empower those who scapegoat her.

The novel begins with Pecola being sent to live with the McTeer family- sisters Claudia and Frieda who live in strict, but warm family home where under the careful watch of their mother, has taught them to love themselves, especially spunky Claudia, who is confused as to why black isn't beautiful? She asks "What made people look at them and say, awww, but not for me?" (Morrison 22).

Claudia, unlike Pecola, refuses to conform to the norms of white beauty to the point of having violent thoughts, "I had only one desire: to dismember it" (Morrison 20).

Claudia and Frieda soon come to realize that its Pecola's inherent acceptance of self hate is why she is victimized so often: she wears it on her sleeve, and even those with the deepest insecurities and self hatred abuse this innocent girl as their physical and sexual punching bag just to make themselves feel bigger.

Beginning with the lack of a family support from her mother Pauline, brother Sammy; Pecola is victimized by classmate Maureen, a lonely boy named Junior whose mother has bizarre acts with the family cat leading to the horrifying scene where her father Cholly impregnates and rapes her. It's a shattering novel.

However, since Professor Morrison writes with so much empathy and backstory to the characters who victimize Pecola- especially her mother and father, we understand and have an empathy to their hideous actions- but we cannot sympathize with the violation of an innocent human being.

The Bluest Eye is a haunting, poetic novel that seizes racial self hatred by the horns and examines race as a construct that is both empowering and disheartening.

It also asks the question of why is the construct of whiteness and blue eyes more beautiful than being happy with oneself? I asked and reflected on my own experiences as man of color of how whiteness presented itself to me as something I thought about attaining- but quickly realized could never have.

As an adult, I couldn't put this novel down, and I remember how powerful Professor Morrison's love and rage was through her writing, and her work is always meant to be revisited from time to time.

O autodesprezo racial

De Gobineau defendia que «todas as civilizações derivam da raça branca, nenhuma pode existir sem a sua ajuda e a sociedade só é grande e brilhante na medida em que preservar o sangue do grupo nobre que a criou.» (pág. 156)

Uma menina negra, Pecola, anseia por ter os olhos azuis de uma menina branca; se os seus olhos fossem diferentes talvez dissessem:«Ai, cuidado com a Pecola dos olhos bonitos. Não devemos fazer coisas más à frente daqueles olhos tão bonitos.»

Era no tempo que as prendas especiais no Natal, por exemplo, eram sempre bonecas de olhos azuis como símbolo da beleza perfeita e a magia que exerciam.

«Todas as noites, sem falta, ela rezava por uns olhos azuis. Fervorosamente, durante um ano, ela rezava. Embora um nadinha desanimada, tinha alguma esperança.»

Pecola é atacada na escola por ser a mais escura de todas e começa a sentir desprezo pela sua própria negritude.

Por seu lado, também Pauline, a mãe de Pecola, tinha conhecido no cinema o amor romântico e a beleza física, e, vendo nela um sinónimo de virtude, acumulou pilhas de desprezo.

Muitas personagens atravessam este romance com cenas de sexo violento, chocante e um acto atroz do pai de Pecola.

É doloroso de ler mas devia ser de leitura obrigatória. A discriminação da raça negra e a disfuncionalidade da família criaram raizes dentro do elo mais fraco. Vítima de agressões sociais e familiares, a vida de Pecola foi desprezada, mal interpretada.

n  n    Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently, for a year she had prayed. Although somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope. To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time.

Thrown, in this way, into the binding conviction that only a miracle could relieve her, she would never know her beauty. She would see only what there was to see. The eyes of other people.n  n

Meet Pecola Breedlove, never had a figure cut quite so tragic since the Russians discovered crime.

Pecola was inspired by Morrison's childhood encounter with a friend who wanted blue eyes... Blue eyes to help her escape the shackles of blackness. Of ugliness. Morrison, at the time, was offended. Angry. The same is carried through in Claudia's narration.


The Bluest Eye poster from The Aurora Theatre Company

Unlike Pecola, Claudia is contemptuous of whiteness.

n  I destroyed white baby dolls. But the dismembering of dolls was not the true horror. The truly horrifying thing was the transference of the same impulses to little white girls. The indifference with which I could have axed them was shaken only by my desire to do so.n

Whiteness was responsible for so much suffering of our characters that even those predisposed to despise them would eventually learn to. It was an inevitability. When a teenage Cholly (Pecola's father), is happened upon while making love to a girl in a field by white men, they land their flashlight on him and force him to finish. Make it a good show for them.

n  They were big, white, armed me. He was small, black, helpless. His subconscious knew what his conscious mind did not guess—that hating them would have consumed him, burned him up like a piece of soft coal.n

So it comes as a bit of a surprise that Pecola wants proximity to this thing of evil.

It's understandable that it's surprising. Claudia has seen how white people and even light skin black people dehumanize them. Mistreat them. But for Pecola, who has been isolated for her ugliness, whiteness, or its pinnacle—blue eyes—means she's no longer invisible.

Often times she found herself dismissed for she was small, black and ugly. When she goes to a candy shop to buy Mary Janes, which have a picture of a woman with blue eyes, Pecola is all too aware of how the white immigrant owner can't see her. He looked at her with the total absence of human recognition—the glazed separateness. Morrison goes on to tell us that Pecola has seen interest, disgust, even anger in grown male eyes. And the vacuum isn't new for her. There was distaste in the white gaze for black people. For Pecola, blackness is static and dread. And it is the blackness that accounts for, that creates, the vacuum edged with distaste in white eyes.

Perhaps, the saddest thing of it all is that in all things, all Pecola knows is desire. Yearning. No one ever tries to grant her heart's wishes. Or basic needs. Except the three sex workers who are their neighbours. Their openness with Pecola is charming. Morrison has an ear for interaction. You feel as though a part of the few moments of Pecola's joy. But soon you're reminded that Pecola's lot is misery. If she rolled a dice, they would vanish into thin air. Her own mother despised her and not for a lack of trying. Her father loved her in the worst way a father could show his love.

The story ends having given a magnified glimpse of this small Ohio town. The story had a feel of a comic book panel. Each displaying a vignette of the few people pivotal to Pecola's wish for blue eyes. I had hoped for more of each of them. That's a personal preference for long winding lingering tales. This book may not need one, but I don't see how it would ever be a bad thing for the world to get more of Morrison.

Ultimately, this is a story that centres blackness. The ugliness of blackness. How we can be thoughtless of our own and neglectful of the most vulnerable. The glee with which women crowed and cawed at the misfortune of a little girl is too familiar. The faces have changed but the behaviours are still the same. And our girls shouldn't need blue eyes to feel seen.


n  edit: mission accomplished. I almost gave her a heart attack