The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison 1970

Devastation Rating

Existential Dread
injustice literary fiction trauma family loss

Our Take

Pecola Breedlove wants blue eyes because she has been taught that she is ugly, and Morrison shows exactly how that teaching is done — by community, by culture, by those who should have protected her. The novel begins with its ending and asks you to watch anyway. Devastation that implicates the whole system.

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