i'm scared of who i'll become when i don't have any more toni morrison to read.there's no one like her on race, beauty, the cruelty of society, the way we carry past wounds with us, the attempt to love selflessly by people. the fact that this is a debut is unbelievable. possibly the best first book i've ever read.pecola is an unforgettable character, and the way this manages to tell her story even when it's through the perspective of others is masterful. everything in this book is thoughtful, ev...

Toni Morrison stole my thunder! She says it best about The Bluest Eye.“If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.”Set in Loraine, Ohio in 1941, young girls, Claudia and Frieda MacTeer welcome an 11-year-old girl, Pecola Breedlove into their home. Pecola is temporarily sheltering with the MacTeer family while her father is in jail.“Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes.”“He laughed the grown-up getting-ready-to-lie laugh.”The last half of the book presents the backst...

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 ...

This is going to be a very; very long critical review of a so-called 'African American classic'...So there you have been warned... First, I want to say that I didn't have to read this book for a school/college project, or anything. I had just finished reading the memoir "Black Boy" by Richard Wright (which has turned into my favorite most relatable black memoirs of all time). This was given to me by a close relative who loves reading too. Every other black person I've seen (especially the consci...

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 ...

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 ...

"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...

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 ...

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...

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...