This short but very moving novel is an early work by the Pulitzer
and Nobel prize-winning author Toni Morrison, first published in
1970. According to an Afterword by the author, at that time the
book was 'dismissed, trivialised, misread'. It is in fact a seminal
work of Black American culture, set in small town Ohio in 1941. The
story grew from an incident in Morrison's own life when a friend
told her she wanted blue eyes, and how when Morrison visualized how
grotesque her black friend would look if she got her wish, she fell
into a rage. She would not have known then to identify her friend's
wish as racial self-loathing, but in retrospect she sees that is
what it was. The incident vividly illustrates the status quo before
the 'Black Power' movement of the sixties, and is the inspiration
behind the story narrated by Claudia McTeer, from a poor but
respectable family, who give a foster-home to a girl named Pecola
Breedlove who is about twelve, the same age as the narrator's elder
sister. Eventually it is revealed that Pecola's father, Cholly, has
raped his daughter, leaving her pregnant. Throguhout the narrative
Morrison's use of language and incident highlights the unfair and
arbitrary gap between the fortunes of black and white Americans.
(Kirkus UK)
The Bluest Eye chronicles the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family in 1940s Ohio: Pauline, Cholly, Sam and Pecola. Pecola, unlovely and unloved, prays each night for blue eyes like those of her privileged blond white schoolfellows. She becomes the focus of the mingled love and hatred engendered by her family's frailty and the world's cruelty as the novel moves toward a savage but poignant resolution.
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