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Article: Black and blue: an unforgettable literary debut, The Bluest Eye was Toni Morrison's attempt to expel the despair of a generation. (Backstory).(Book Review)
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- Book
- Article date:
- January 1, 2003
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IN THE BLUEST EYE, HER FIRST BOOK, TONI Morrison tells an ugly story beautifully. Published in 1970, the slender, spare novel explores the impact of racism on young black girls. The protagonist is Pecola Breedlove, an eleven-year-old black girl who is convinced she is "relentlessly and aggressively ugly" and thus yearns for blue eyes--and for the society-approved beauty she believes they will give her.
Morrison started writing the novel in the mid-1960s, when large numbers of African-Americans began asserting that blackness is beautiful. But the idea for The Bluest Eye lodged itself in her brain twenty years earlier. Born Chloe Anthony Wofford, Morrison grew up ...