A review by smerika
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

As someone who usually gravitates toward fantasy and horror, with a preference for dark, adventurous, and often longer reads, The Bluest Eye isn't a book I would typically choose. My decision to read it stemmed from becoming acutely aware of the increase in book bans, especially here in Texas. I began researching and exploring, and I realized that the most abhorrent thing about people calling for these bans is that they often haven't read the books themselves. So, before I went around demonizing book bans, I wanted to read some of the top banned ones that I had never read, and this was at the top of the list.
I was honestly conflicted after finishing it, as I absolutely see why you might ban this until at least high school. However, it was truly amazing. I have never read anything that got this close to what the experiences of being a little Black girl would be like, living in true poverty in a different era.
I find that many authors are split into areas of strength; it's not often you have someone who is good at world-building and strong character development at the same time. But to add true emotional intelligence, such raw deepness, while also writing so well from a child's perspective, was eerie. The things within the child's experience were both beautiful and horrific, yet described with lush vocabulary and detail, which also made them beautiful in another way.
I loved how the main character asks questions, thinks, and assesses people, which made me feel validated. The blunt way she asks questions, the details she notices, and the ways she is 'hypervigilant' in assessing others goes beyond the skills (at least consciously) of many people I talk to, and I usually feel alone in that.
The horrors. Feeling stuck. Dealing with alcoholic adults. I have never read something so blunt but without feeling like it's trying too hard to shock or sicken you – it felt like surgical precision, laying bare the truth without resorting to sensationalism for shock value.
Like I felt like I could finally glimpse some of what the experience of child sexual abuse does to a little girl. I have an adult in my life who helped raise me who experienced poverty, child abuse, sexual abuse, and emotional abuse. Over the years, I have come to realize that I cannot truly relate to their experience. It's like when I got a chronic condition diagnosis and I realized what I didn't previously know about the hardships of that, to be able to be supportive to others in my life who had gone through similar health things before me. Morrison's descriptions and the main character being a child offered an in-depth perspective that was unavailable to me elsewhere, and it felt like a similar epiphany to my health analogy. My eyes felt opened, and it gave me an understanding I didn't know that I wanted into why someone close to me has the relics of that same kind of abuse in the ways they do. Especially the self-delusion. I found myself weeping for Pecola and the adult in my life I referenced.
The external factors were overwhelming too: The way they were treated because of race. Because of being female. Because of being young. How much more stuck could you be? None of those aspects was in their control.
I finished it in the Target parking lot after a drive-up order. And I stayed parked, weeping. Incredibly powerful without flexing. I'm getting goosebumps thinking about it. I did have to put it down several times because it was triggering.
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