Scholars and critics have returned to this novel to assess its meaning for the 21st century, where even as there is seemingly racial progress, anti-Blackness persists. The novel remains one of the most forceful critiques of the institutional workings of white supremacy and how it is imbricated in sexism, economic inequality, and colorism. Black women and girls remain perilously situated at the intersections of racial and gender violence and it is imperative that any conversations on anti-racism attend to this undeniable truth.Īs people navigate this uniquely challenging time, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is increasingly appearing on lists of must-reads about racism. At the same time, Black women such as Oluwatoyin Salau, Dominique Fells, and Riah Milton have recently been killed as a result of gender-based violence. The police who murdered Breonna Taylor during a botched raid, while she was sleeping in bed, have still not been arrested as of the time of this writing. While I am inspired by the rebellion taking place, I remain disheartened by how Black women and girls, who are also victims of state violence, often enter the conversation as afterthoughts. People are rightly enraged by the senseless murders of Black men, and this preponderance has driven large swaths of people out of their homes during a global pandemic and into the streets for protests. The onslaught of Black death at the hands of police continues unabated. We are living in a time of tremendous social upheaval and unrest. This disparity makes returning to Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, which turns 50 this year, more critical right now than ever. While I have deeply appreciated the meditations on the brutal realities of growing up as a Black boy in the world - something that has informed how I care for and talk to my son about growing up in America - there is an imbalance of public discourse that raises up the precariousness of coming of age as a Black girl. However, Black children aren’t often granted the luxury of good soil. This should be the standard for all children coming of age in this world. This kind of supportive narrative shouldn’t feel exceptional to me. The girl’s flowers were planted in good soil, in a loving community where people wanted to see her thrive. The community becomes so invested in her project they cheer when the flowers bloom, lament when they die, and paint a mural honoring her efforts. The comment was inspired by a book, The Garden of Happiness, that we had read during our homeschooling adventure, wherein a little girl plants sunflower seeds in her community garden and wills them to life. She smiled at the thought of being compared to the plant. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment.“YOU ARE A SUNFLOWER,” I recently said to my daughter after a trip to a home and garden store where, in our search for flowers to spruce up our small garden, she wanted sunflowers. It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove-a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others-who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature. PublishDateText mediaType Audiobook shortDescription IsPublicPerformanceAllowed False languages OverDrive Product Record sortTitle Bluest Eye crossRefId 509204 images