kneecoo 's review for:

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

4.5

dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Loveable characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Hard to stomach at times, but this is a book I haven’t stopped thinking about since I turned the last page. Beautiful, vivid prose. Although I was neutral about the multiple perspectives at first, I came to appreciate how they showed the different ways internalised racism can build and manifest. 

This stuck with me most:

“We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our strength.

    And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.”