THE BLUEST EYE (audiobook) by Toni Morrison

The author won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Originally published in 1970.
This audiobook version was published in 2011 by Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group.
Read by the author, Toni Morrison.
Duration: 7 hours, 6 minutes
Unabridged.

Synopsis:

This is a story of a girl named Pecola who lives in Ohio in the 1940's. She is sexually abused by her father and only knows her mother by the name Mrs. Breedlove. Sometimes she lives with other families as her family struggles.

Pecola is universally considered an ugly child. Pecola wants nothing more than to have blue eyes like Shirley Temple because she is convinced that blue eyes would make her pretty.

The narrative goes round and round and moves back and forth in time, often re-telling certain aspects of the story from different perspectives that fill in the gaps as the reader proceeds. 

In the end, it is not a complicated story, but it is told in a complicated manner.

My review:

Undoubtedly, my take on this book is overshadowed by the audiobook that I listened to immediately before this one: The Handmaid's Tale (click to see that review). On the surface, they have nothing in common - one is dystopian sci-fi, one is set in 1940's Ohio. But, they both share a common theme - the overwhelming sense of despair of people living in a society that is misshapen by a set of rules. Jim Crow era life for African-Americans was its own dystopia.

In The Handmaid's Tale, the rules are enforced by religious elite (or, elite that twist religion to serve themselves). In The Bluest Eye, the rules are enforced by a mostly unseen white society (white characters, even the mention of white characters take up only a few minutes of this 7 hour audiobook). 

White culture sets the standard of beauty for black culture (as demonstrated by Shirley Temple and Pecola's envy), it sets the rules about where black people can live, where they go to school, how long they can go to school before they have to leave to work, what types of jobs they can have and more. It determines almost everything.

Morrison shows a variety of families in the novel. Pecola's family is barely a family at all. She has a sexually abusive father named Cholley. Cholley's first sexual intimate moment was interrupted by white hunters who stumble upon Cholley and a girl and humiliate them by making them continue the act under the threat of their guns while they taunt and critique them. Her mother shows more care for the white family that she works for and shows more care for their daughter than her own. 

Claudia and Freida's family struggles, but they are making it - barely. Geraldine and Junior are rich by African American standards, but Junior has to attend a certain school and has to be friends with certain people and Junior takes it out on other African-American kids. Even the rich are limited in this system.

Toni Morrison (1931-2019)

The Bluest Eye was the first novel by the winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, Toni Morrison (1931-2019). I was spurred to read it because of a news story out of Idaho about 22 books being banned "forever" and this book was included.

Turns out that The Bluest Eye is one of the most banned books in the country. Here is a story out of Missouri and here is a link specifically for The Bluest Eye from a university that tracks banned books. 

This book is specifically complained about for sexual content. Ironically enough, the people who complain about the sexual content are usually the same folks that complain about Critical Race Theory (CRT). CRT teaches that everything is tinged with race in America and this book embraces that theme wholeheartedly, and I have to say that CRT is more right than it is wrong.

I am a 30+ year high school teacher so I thought I'd read this book and give my opinion on whether or not it belongs in school. I have been teaching grades 7-12 in some form or another for 32 years. I have a 16 year old daughter and a 22 year old daughter. I also have a very high threshold for outright banning a book. There are books I wouldn't want to personally teach in class, but that doesn't mean they don't belong in a school or a classroom library.

I am convinced that a talented high school teacher could teach this book (see this article). This book has some powerful themes.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.