The Bluest Eye
Ratings205
Average rating4
The complexity of pain, of self hatred, the raw humanity of so many characters... It's a tough read that forces the reader to grapple with their own ease of judgement. And while not the sole point of the book by any means, the damage adults render unto children by not facing their own hurt is cruel and vast.
“And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.”
Could not have picked a worse time to read this, but it was really good. Definitely recommend.
Beautiful, sorrowful, and shame-inducing. And, as I've seen it described elsewhere, including on the back cover, “subtle” and “graceful”. A very powerful and moving novel that everyone should read. (I also liked this more than Beloved, but now I want to go back and reread Beloved.)
“Love is never any better than the lover. Wicked people love wickedly, violent people love violently, weak people love weakly, stupid people love stupidly, but the love of a free man is never safe.”
“This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.”
this book is so awful yet I've never found language that so accurately describes my self hate :/
I'm not sure how to rate this. read at your own peril. it was banned for a reason
I don't know what to say about this book. It made me think, it made me uncomfortable but most of all, the story and lyrical left me in awe. Pecola's story will not be for everyone nor will it be understood, but it needs to be told. It's a cautionary tale that comments on the impact of racism, toxic masculinity, grief, pain and the Black experience of that time.
This is a powerful book that is begging to be discussed and argued over. We get a series of traumatic events without the feelings and interior changes that happen when humans are dealing with trauma. So there is a lot of assumptions that we can fill in about it. And I think that says as much about the reader as it says about the author or the characters.
This is a horrific story and there is a lot of trauma, so reading this may not be for everyone at just anytime. But it is important.
I'd read other works of Morrison's before but not this one, but I got tickets to see a production of the play version of it and figured I should try to read the book first. Feels dumb to be like “wow Toni Morrison is a great writer” but like, wow. Especially for a debut novel, just so powerful right out of the gate, and sadly still resonant.
(Reading it and knowing I was going to see it as a play, I kept wondering how the adaptation would work because the structure here is so specific and so much of the book's power comes from that and from the narrative voice. But it turns out that's why I'm not a dramaturg because the play was also very powerful just also different and ultimately I think more hopeful than the book. But both are very good imo! Hot take!)
An intense character study about the unravelling of the self for the sake of others. Morrison took this by the reins and forces you to stare different versions of corruption in the face. Not for the faint of heart; potentially triggering content in the latter one-third of the book. Speculative, intrinsic. In some places, it felt as though it was too slow and speculative, but these places paid off through how she wove all of the threads together. Beware of a non-too-happy ending, but sometimes, that's life.
CW: rape, child abuse, domestic abuse, death, pedophilia, incest, racism, assault, alcohol abuse, blood, colorism, animal abuse, fatphobic comments, use of the word g*psy.
okay so i'm kinda disappointed and conflicted about my thoughts on this book. in one hand i how trauma heavy this book was. it felt like every chapter was just trauma after trauma. it was so hard to read sometimes. and on the other hand i do feel like the commentary of blackness and how it gets overshadowed by whiteness. it's a conversation that we should be having to this day. i also thought that the book in itself was constructed in a weird way. i didn't get any time to really connect with any of the characters or their stories. the second i started to feel for a character the story would change to focus on another. it had a weird flow throughout the book. i personally didn't fully like how it felt like the author wanted to make us sympathize with pecola's parents. even after knowing the abuse that both of them put her through. i understand that maybe she wanted to show the reader that sometimes abuse is a constant loop birthed by abuse and trauma. i appreciate her intent and thought it was interesting to see her parents pasts. but it still doesn't mean it's okay to treat her the way they did.
i really liked toni morrison's writing and would like to pick up her other books. also, i know this is her debut so maybe something else by her would surely work for me.
CW: rape, child abuse, domestic abuse, death, pedophilia, incest, racism, assault, alcohol abuse, blood, colorism, animal abuse, fatphobic comments, use of the word g*psy.
okay so i'm kinda disappointed and conflicted about my thoughts on this book. in one hand i how trauma heavy this book was. it felt like every chapter was just trauma after trauma. it was so hard to read sometimes. and on the other hand i do feel like the commentary of blackness and how it gets overshadowed by whiteness. it's a conversation that we should be having to this day. i also thought that the book in itself was constructed in a weird way. i didn't get any time to really connect with any of the characters or their stories. the second i started to feel for a character the story would change to focus on another. it had a weird flow throughout the book. i personally didn't fully like how it felt like the author wanted to make us sympathize with pecola's parents. even after knowing the abuse that both of them put her through. i understand that maybe she wanted to show the reader that sometimes abuse is a constant loop birthed by abuse and trauma. i appreciate her intent and thought it was interesting to see her parents pasts. but it still doesn't mean it's okay to treat her the way they did.
i really liked toni morrison's writing and would like to pick up her other books. also, i know this is her debut so maybe something else by her would surely work for me.
I've never liked GR's ratings system, and authors like Toni Morrison are one of the reasons why. For many books, an “I really liked it” or “I loved it” is not sufficient. Many books are not meant to be liked, they're meant to dig into your bones and make you uncomfortable, or teach something you can never experience for yourself; they may be fantastically written but to say “I loved it” would be incorrect, inaccurate, and beside the point.
All that to say, as always Ms. Morrison is excellent, this book is difficult in subject while being just a shade heavier than breezy in its tone, much of it told by Claudia, a young girl who could not be expected to understand all the heartbreak around her. Pecola, barely older than Claudia, who only wants to be loved and seen as beautiful, but who has instead been impregnated by her own father and subjected to the scorn of the town. Broken characters all over this book, almost all of them dealing with trauma of some kind. Not much else to say. There's no uplift, and still this is a very good book.
TW: incest, rape/sexual abuse of minors, other sexual assaults, child loss, racism
I listened to this on Audiobooks. I wish I had read it. Her language is so beautiful, that seeing the words to savour them would have been better. I strongly suggest you read the author's notes at the end. I found them to really bring the story together for me. This is a wonderful book about race, relationships, hardship, and survival. Just read the first page and you will understand!
What is my dumb butt going to say that is adequate? Very powerful, and still timely. Heartbreaking. We are still holding girls up to impossible beauty standards, making them feel inherently ugly because of the color of their skin. There's still too much judgement, and not enough love. We're all being nicked and cut by casual and deliberate cruelties. We're still inflicting our pain on others.
I finished this, went to sleep, and woke up almost too sad to get out of bed. My heart is broken for Pecola, for all the Pecolas.
Toni Morrison is a true artist. Her words never fail to move me. This book was my first Toni Morrison. I read it back in my 20's for course I was taking at the time. I loved it then, and I love it now upon rereading it. Pecola Breedlove is one of the most heartbreaking characters I have ever encountered. This child thinks she is ugly because society and her own family tell her so. She wishes for blue eyes thinking they will make her beautiful and bring her love. That by itself is heartbreaking, but when you add in the other horrible things that happen to her, it is almost unbearable.
This book makes the reader feel disgusted and outraged, but those feelings are sometimes necessary. Without that outrage, we might not seek to change things in the world. Toni Morrison does not shy away from the ugly side of humanity. She amplifies it so the reader will react. And react we do.
If you have never read a Toni Morrison book, you should. This one is a good one to start with. It is short, and it is not loaded with complex symbolism like many of her other books. I highly recommend it.
A difficult, but important book.
Difficult for two reasons: first, it tells stories of injustice and despair that are just really hard to read. There's child abuse, poverty, racism. You feel tense, you cringe. I wouldn't say I “enjoyed” reading this. Second, the style - it's elliptical, a little avant garde (I probably missed a lot by listening to the audiobook rather than reading it), and sometimes Toni Morrison leads you down a dreamy, sympathy-inducing detour about a character just to then BAM!! BODY SLAM you with something of their awful doing in the end. BAM! TAKE THAT. I was sometimes left mouth open, horrified.
But! Important, too. Of course. Terrible things happen in America, and they happen due to structural racism. A big part of racism is the whole fantasy that stuff ISN'T this bad, that lives - generations - HAVEN'T been completely ruined, or that it's “all over now”, thanks to the Emancipation Proclamation/the end of segregation/the Civil Rights movement. As we enlarge our understanding of the size and shape of these injustices, we enlarge our compassion and sympathy and, maybe?? political engagement? I dunno. America's never had a real reckoning with its racist past (and present) - not the way post-1960s Germany has had a reckoning with its Nazi crimes, or South Africa its Truth and Reconciliation Commission for apartheid. And so these things have festered (and we get the anti-Obama backlash and rise of Trumpism).