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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtlety and grace. • With a new introduction by Jacqueline Woodson. “So precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry”—The New York Times In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. Read more
Publisher : Vintage
Publication date : May 8, 2007
Edition : Reprint
Language : English
Print length : 206 pages
ISBN-10 : 0307278441
ISBN-13 : 49
Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
Dimensions : 8 x 5.25 x 0.8 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #4,712 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #25 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books) #36 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction #252 in Literary Fiction (Books)
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Top Amazon Reviews
Format: Paperback
The Bluest Eye is a classic for the powerful themes that continue to relate to society today. As Toni Morrison mentions in her foreword, we all know what it feels like to be disliked or rejected, be it for a moment or for a suspended period of time. Moving beyond this statement, we all know what it feels like to be dissatisfied with our appearance. Even if we are generally happy with how we look, there will be periods of time when we wish that we were "prettier." The media bombards with with images of the feminine (and masculine) ideal. Advertisements tell us how we can look sexier and be more confident (by buying their products). We are constantly told that we are not up to standard and ought to try harder to look like the ideal. The problem is that we can try our whole lives and never look like the "ideal." Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye examines the intersectionality of race, class, gender, and age in the oppression of black people through beauty ideals and the pressure to conform to them. She does this through sketches in the lives of multiple characters of different backgrounds and across generations. Generally, I'm not very fond of novels that move around so much, as it makes it difficult to get to know any particular character, but this technique works for Morrison's novel. Rather than events moving the plot forward (like most novels), the plot takes us through the lives of different characters in order to show how the white beauty ideal influences black people of different temperaments, class, and circumstances . . . causing them to internalize racism. This does mean that there is a lot of narrating going on. At times, I even found it hard to focus on the page. For the most part, however, I felt that Morrison does a good job moving the plot forward. It definitely helps that her writing is strong and interesting with many, many beautiful, powerful lines that moved my heart. Once I started The Bluest Eye, I was reluctant to put down the novel for lengthy periods of time. Most importantly, these sketches show us how people come to be the people that they are today. Humans are not born to be terrible. The way our natures interact with the environment to which we are exposed shapes our character. There were characters who I disliked early in the book only to realize later that they were not such terrible beings. At least, not at first. Things happened, and maybe their response wasn't the healthiest, but they lived at some point in their lives. Until they internalized racism and began to believe that they deserved the bad things that happened to them. That people couldn't change. The most notable example of the influence of internalized racism is in the home of the Breedloves. Learning about the lives and thoughts of Mrs. and Mr. Breedlove helped me to better understand the environment in which Pecola grew up. Thinking about how Pecola and her brother's lives could have been different helped me to realize how oppression not only influences the people with whom it comes into immediate contact but also their children and the generations to come. (Compare the parenting Pecola receives to the parenting Claudia receives.) I also want to note how Morrison uses the Dick and Jane primer to emphasize the psychological element to oppression. The Dick and Jane primer portrays the ideal white family. The way its grammar and structure falls apart in the first pages of the novel reminds me of horror movies where a seemingly benign and pleasant scene falls apart to become something terrifying. In the same way, the lives of the black families, particularly that of the Breedloves, will upend in The Bluest Eye. The inclusion of distorted sections of the primer at the beginning of certain chapters foreshadows this. The Bluest Eye is haunting and beautiful. At the same time, it is terrible and brutal in its honest portrayal of the interlinking systems of oppression through race, class, gender, and age. There are explicit scenes of domestic violence, rape, and sex, as well as a pervasive sense of hopelessness. Nevertheless, there is life, love, and tenderness behind seemingly harsh acts. As Claudia says at the beginning of the novel, "since why is hard to handle, one must take refuge in how." Building upon this statement, if we can learn how things come to be, then we can learn how to ensure history does not repeat itself. We can learn how to keep future generations from sharing Pecola's end.
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Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2015 by Crystal
Format: Paperback
This book will take you through every emotion if you read it with an open heart. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so I will just say this is a MUST READ!!!
Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2025 by The Smith Marrero's The Smith Marrero's
Format: Paperback
(SPOILERS UPCOMING!!) This was my first Toni Morrison book so I definitely did not expect what was going to happen in the book. The physical quality of the book is great and the text was easy to read. My prior knowledge of this book and the author was simply what I read on the back. I was expecting it to be a more emotionally difficult read but not as disturbing as it became. The story follows three young black girls in 1940's USA: Claudia and Frieda (who are sisters) and Pecola. The namesake of the book comes from Pecola's obsession to have blue eyes to be accepted by her peers, who, in a society where whiteness is the beauty standard, make fun of her. The book definitely does not hold back on the issue of racism and especially focuses on internalized racism and oppression within the black community as most of the characters are black. It covers a couple of complex matters like wealth, class, societal beauty standards, family, and womanhood. (SPOILERS START) The way Toni Morrison talks about these issues is refreshing as she doesn't hold back and presents it in the way that these issues are in real life; raw, ugly, and complicated. The characters who face oppression in these books rarely, if ever see justice and the novel instead focuses on how they cope with it and the impact of it. The book is written very beautifully and is filled with a cold dose of reality for people who have not experienced oppression or societal pressure to the point that these characters have. The only issue I have with the book involves two scenes. One scene details Pecola's rape by her father, and another includes a character named Soaphead Church. The first scene goes into a little too much detail then I would like about the situation, making it seem a bit erotic in nature. A reminder that Pecola is only around 11-12 years old, if I remember correctly. Because of the way Morrison portrays and explains the actions of Pecola's father's thinking that lead to the rape, it leaves me with complicated feelings. There is also another excerpt where a young mixed man, Soaphead Church, writes about his love for little girls and mentions, though not as thorough as the rape scene, touching them and doing it in a way that they "enjoyed". The largest criticism of the book I have is that many of the scenes in which a character is assaulted is told from a point of view that focuses on the thoughts and actions of the abuser rather than the victim and, of course, shows how they try to justify their actions. Morrison never portrays any of their thinking as right or wrong, but just is. As someone who finds it hard to justify any sort of assult or abuse, it was very hard to finish this book. Great read but I would suggest reading another one of her books like Sula or Song of Solomon as this is definitely the hardest book, emotionally speaking, of Toni Morrison's to finish.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2022 by Sapphire A