The Bluest Eye
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4.3 • 894 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtlety and grace.
In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—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.
Here, Morrison’s writing is “so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry” (The New York Times).
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Nobel and Pulitzer Prize–winning author Toni Morrison’s debut novel has been met with controversy over the decades due to its unblinking portrayals of racism, inequality, and sexual violence. The Bluest Eye follows the lives of two young Black girls in a small Ohio town in the 1940s. The engrossing novel reflects the harsh realities of its time and place, but Morrison’s lyrical writing and powerful empathy for her characters shine bright. The result is a sobering yet ultimately hopeful vision of how Black women are taught to see themselves and others.
Customer Reviews
Its rough love <3
What can I say about Toni Morrison that Oprah hasn't already said?
It is simply magnificent, I read it for a close comparative read of her and William Faulkner- I could barely put it down it was so captivating
It's tough to read sometimes because her focus on details to characters you would not normally want to focus on, making it difficult to really hate the antagonists or admire the protagonists. It's a lovely way to evaluate people through different views, understanding why "bad" people do the bad things they do...
It makes you stare down the characters intentions; whether it was done maliciously or was really well meant.
I loved it and would suggest it to anyone : )
Easy read/ study
I liked the story but then the writing went off into a whole different tangent of writing and I just got lost. This could be partly easy read/ part something to study.
Best book
I’ve read both Sula and Beloved, and even though this was her debut novel, it is my favorite. I am in love with Morrison she is genius in the way she incorporates beauty standards and the way trauma is passed down in family’s and the call back moments. This book has had me thinking all day. Later in the book I kept turning back to reflect the callback to characters and realizing the full circle that the way the character come together and impact each other. And despite Claudia being the narrator, Pecola is a tragedy of a main character. Morrison never fails to write terrible, traumatic scenes without glorifying or making a spectacle of it.