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Aug 19, 2013
The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison I was a little skeptical about reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, the cover did not grab my attention at first but I decided to give it a try and I’m glad I did. The tittle had me thinking before I even opened the book, I wondered how the title could relate to this little black girl on the cover. The story revolves around Pecola, a little black girl in America who yearns for blue eyes because she thinks that having blue eyes would make her life better, she thinks blue eyes will make her beautiful, and it would change the way her peers and her parents perceives her. The author got her messages across in a unique style of writing; she splits the book into different seasons & talks about each character one by one for the readers to learn a little bit more about them. The Bluest Eye show the ways in which internalized white beauty standards deforms the lives of black girls and women. Implicit messages that whiteness is superior are everywhere, including the white baby given to Claudia, the idealization of Shirley Temple and the idealization of white movies. The person who suffers most from white beauty standards is, of course, Pecola. She connects beauty with being loved and believes that if she possesses blue eyes, the cruelty in her life will be replaced by affection and respect. This hopeless desire leads ultimately to madness, suggesting that the fulfillment of the wish for white beauty may be even more tragic than the wish impulse itself. I would recommend everyone who’s sixteen or older to read this book because it’s a little bit graphic at times but I truly believe that all races and genders could relate to this book. It’s a great read, you will not regret it.