The Bluest Eye

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).