The Bluest Eye

By Toni Morrison
Vintage Publishing (Reprint 2007)
ASIN: B000TWUTYQ
Kindle Version, file size 1375 kb; paperback 206 pages

This was not an easy read, and I’ll probably be digesting it for a very long time. Toni Morrison done a splendid job of waving in our faces the horrific concept of beauty vs. ugliness, especially the characters’ comparison of “beauty” for Black people vs. “beauty” for non-Black people. All the characters are from the Black community, early 60s, when there were separate sales counters for Blacks at the bus station and so on. Housing for Blacks was “that side of town,” and Black people worked for pennies as household servants.

But another part of The Bluest Eye’s story delves into sexuality in those communities, and not just sex between a man and a woman. While there are no scenes with male/male or female/female sexuality, there are hints (and some more explicit passages) of incest and pedophilia, with tragic consequences. These, especially, were hard for me to read.

The story is told in a non-linear fashion, starting in one place and working backward in fits and starts. Told mostly from a narrator’s point of view, we see the development of multiple Black characters, and can understand what drove them to be who they are in the story. Their tales are tragic, heart-wrenching, and all-too-believable. The saddest part, to me, was that they accepted it as The Way It Is. It is a tale of that time, yes, but its points are still wedged into our society in far too many ways.

The central point, though, is the way these characters see themselves as ugly, as “not as good” as their white classmates, teachers, and bosses. The title comes from one young Black girl’s fervent wish for blue eyes, because if she only had such a prize, she would surely be beautiful.

Not only does this book bring out racial mistreatment of Blacks by non-Blacks, but also of the way Blacks saw themselves in a sub-par light. It’s about self-hatred, racial denigration by the members of the race being denigrated. They believe they will never be beautiful. They accept the idea that they are ugly, and dream of how much better their lives would be if only they could attain loveliness—but the prize they sought was measured by another race’s yardstick, instead of seeing the inherent beauty in their own skin. And not just the beauty of the body, but of a culture. A race. A people. Always, the beauty they seek is “over there,” never” in here.”

I promised myself I would read six banned books this year. This is number two. The Bluest Eye was banned for many reasons: sexually explicit material, sexually violent content, graphic descriptions, disturbing language, and an “underlying socialist-communist agenda.” I can see those first few, but not that last one. But I think this book also makes readers uncomfortable with the glare of its truth, the harsh peek behind the scenes of what life was like then (and, to some degree and in some places, even now). Racial inequality and comparison from the other side, and a naked glimpse of what those inequities brought to generations of folks.

Definitely not a pleasurable literary escape, but worth the read—if you can take the eye-opening truth.