Toni Morrison’s classic “The Bluest Eye” should be staple read for all Americans of every gender and shade. It’s a shame I only read it recently. I’ve been in the mood to read more classics from BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) writers. I started with the heavy hitters (like Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou, Ralph Ellison, to name a few) because there’s something about their ability to transcend the sociopolitics surrounding their publications and still RISE to garner acclaim.
“The Bluest Eye” has found itself at the end of school book bans, and like the book bans of today, “The Bluest Eye” is unjustly the target of something some readers don’t understand. To think that the Black Feminine mystic – the experience of a black female body – and all that she endures – can be banned is doing exactly what the novel tragically depicts. The slow tearing down and degradation of a black girl.
The exploration that Toni ventures into can be studied in many lens. I choose horror because there was more than one time I had to pause and put the book down.
What I Loved: It’s words are poetic, lively. Toni has an ability to capture pain in color. Painting with words is a cliche that fits. Pecola – the main character the novel seems to be about, but who very rarely shines as protagonist, is the tragic figure of the novel. Other voices overpower her own. She is grossly misunderstood and ridiculed. She has few friends. She is a protagonist unlike any I’ve encountered.
However, there really isn’t any protagonists and antagonists in this novel. At least not in the traditional sense. No one wins under the antagonism of colorism, racism, sexism, and sexual assault.
“The Bluest Eye” reminds me so much of For Colored Girls (who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf), due to its depiction of the many ways those themes have shaped the lives of all the characters within. They are all afflicted, but none more so than Pecola for whom the novel hovers around.
Is it standard horror? YES. The African-America Diaspora in fiction is so ripe for storytelling/revisiting. These Point of Views feel new, but there was always there. As I read I’m haunted at the echoes within me. The novel is an endurance test of pain, which surprisingly puts you in the shoes of those who actually had to walk this day and night, and those who still have to endure it, and have the audacity to keep going.