Article: A childhood denied: In Steppenwolf's `Bluest Eye,' a girl craves what society refuses to give.

Byline: Chris Jones

Oct. 9--In "The Bluest Eye," Pecola Breedlove grows up black and poor in a small Ohio town in the 1940s. In this time and place, a young African-American girl is told that to be beautiful means to look like Shirley Temple or an alabaster doll with blue eyes. The imperiled Breedlove family thinks they are ugly because they have internalized the notions of others.

"Their ugliness," Toni Morrison writes, with tentacles crawling beyond particular time and place, "came from conviction."

Anyone who has read Morrison's painful debut novel can't help but be moved by Pecola's innocence and her environment's willful disregard for a ...

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