Racialized Beauty
Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, was published in 1970.
“In the novel, Morrison challenges Western standards of beauty and demonstrates that the concept of beauty is socially constructed. Morrison also recognises that if whiteness is used as a standard of beauty or anything else, then the value of blackness is diminished and this novel works to subvert that tendency.” (Sugiharti, “Racialized Beauty: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye”).
Her goal in writing the novel was to make a statement about how
“something as grotesque as the demonization of an entire race could take root inside the most delicate member of society: a child; the most vulnerable member: a female” (Morrison 210).
Toni Morrison began writing the novel in the 1960’s, …show more content…
However, the first critic to review the novel only months after it was published, John Leonard, describes the novel as poetry, history, sociology, folklore, nightmare and music. It is one thing to state that we have institutionalized waste, that children suffocate under mountains of merchandised lies. It is another thing to demonstrate that waste, to re-create those children, to live and die by it. Miss Morrison's angry sadness overwhelms (Leonard, “Book of the …show more content…
And it has taken twenty-five years to gain for her the respectful publication this edition is” (Morrison 216).
Currently, The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's most widely read novel in the high school curriculum and is the most challenging of her eight books. However in Steven Otfinoski’s novel, Outsider Fiction, he describes incidents where concerned parents sought to remove the novel from being read in high school due to its explicit sexuality and domestic violence.
The author explains that the idea of writing the novel developed from a conversation with a friend when they first started elementary school. Her friend said the she wished for blue eyes like the white children. When Morrison imagined her friend with the blue eyes that she so heavily desired, she was disgusted by what she would look
“In the novel, Morrison challenges Western standards of beauty and demonstrates that the concept of beauty is socially constructed. Morrison also recognises that if whiteness is used as a standard of beauty or anything else, then the value of blackness is diminished and this novel works to subvert that tendency.” (Sugiharti, “Racialized Beauty: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye”).
Her goal in writing the novel was to make a statement about how
“something as grotesque as the demonization of an entire race could take root inside the most delicate member of society: a child; the most vulnerable member: a female” (Morrison 210).
Toni Morrison began writing the novel in the 1960’s, …show more content…
However, the first critic to review the novel only months after it was published, John Leonard, describes the novel as poetry, history, sociology, folklore, nightmare and music. It is one thing to state that we have institutionalized waste, that children suffocate under mountains of merchandised lies. It is another thing to demonstrate that waste, to re-create those children, to live and die by it. Miss Morrison's angry sadness overwhelms (Leonard, “Book of the …show more content…
And it has taken twenty-five years to gain for her the respectful publication this edition is” (Morrison 216).
Currently, The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's most widely read novel in the high school curriculum and is the most challenging of her eight books. However in Steven Otfinoski’s novel, Outsider Fiction, he describes incidents where concerned parents sought to remove the novel from being read in high school due to its explicit sexuality and domestic violence.
The author explains that the idea of writing the novel developed from a conversation with a friend when they first started elementary school. Her friend said the she wished for blue eyes like the white children. When Morrison imagined her friend with the blue eyes that she so heavily desired, she was disgusted by what she would look