The Bluest Eye

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!)

[b:Toni Morrison 6149 Beloved Toni Morrison http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165555299s/6149.jpg 736076] is a great author who really wrote a compelling novel called The bluest eye. I thought it was really sad to see how ugly one girl could be; and becomes an outcast to society.When in actual life, it is the people who viewed her as ugly,were the ugly ones themselves. Pecola Breedlove is the protagonist in this book who was raped by her father and had to go through changes as a little girl, from getting her first period, to getting bounced from house to house, to getting pregnant. She wishes for blue eyes because during the 1940's, white little girls and boys with blue eyes and blond hair were percieved as beautiful and others are not beautiful. So she prays to God everyday for blue eyes just so she can fit into society. And what is so good about this book is the fact that there are some actual facts that can/could happen in real life, so you have more of a visual image as well as a deeper connection/understanding with the book.

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!

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.

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.

“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.”

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

This book was an interesting look at the life of a girl through the multiple perspectives offered by Morrison. I must say, that I did not enjoy this as much as Sulla. but it was still very well written, and it was an interesting book to read. My only problems with it were the alternating viewpoints. They just lost me most of the time. If you can stand the controversial portrayal of rape and incest that occurs in this text, then you may want to pick this one up. I give it a three out of five.

This is not a happy, uplifting book. If you want some happy reading, then this book is not for you.This book is about “a little black girl who wanted to rise up out of the pit of her blackness and see the world with blue eyes.” It begins with a narrative about Dick and Jane just like you might find in a reading primer. I believe this book is entirely about race, so I don't think it's far-fetched to say that the Dick and Jane is meant to reflect this typical white household, and really what children should aspire to be.The lyrical language of Toni Morrison makes it easy for an average reader like myself to pick up on and understand all kinds of symbolism in the book. I do not have a degree in literature, and sometimes, I just don't get a book. The Bluest Eye is very straightforward in many of its messages, but there are still underlying themes for a reader to uncover.There is an incredibly painful passage in the book describing the rape of a 9 year old girl by her father. It's awful. At the beginning of the story, the narrator (Claudia) says, after explaining that Pecola (the 9 year old girl) has her own father's baby, “There is really nothing more to say–except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.” And then the rest of the book consists of lots of background information including some other important events. Thankfully, the reader knows what they will eventually have to read about.I think the book suffers from what author [a:Daniel Abraham 134 Daniel Abraham http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1207149629p2/134.jpg] has called on his blog “The Curry Rule”, which basically says that if you include a violent sexual assault or rape in a story, it will overshadow anything else in the book. I think this book has become a book about a young girl getting raped, when the point the author is trying to make is much broader. Unfortunately, the big takeaway for a lot of readers seems to be the rape, and not that Pecola wanted more than anything to be white instead of black. So in a way, I don't think the rape needed to be in the novel to get its point across to the reader. Here's a link to the blog post describing The Curry Rule: http://www.danielabraham.com/2012/02/21/malice-rape-and-the-curry-rule/This is an amazing book about racism, and at its core, I think the book is all about racism and not rape. It's lyrical, but not happy or hopeful. And there are several cringe-worthy passages, but I recommend this book to any readers that are OK reading about difficult topics. It's a fast read, and well worth the time you'll spend reading it.