The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Posted: 20 Oct 2015, 15:18
Pecola wants to be beautiful and prays for it as often as she can in the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. Everyday she longs to have blonde hair and blue eyes. However, the more she looks for it though the uglier she feels and the more her life seems to become a tragedy.
This book is written for adults, and honestly the only reason I read it is because I was searching for a book to help me complete my 2015 reading challenge. To complete my challenge, I needed to read a book where it was classified as a popular authors first book. So, I headed to Google and typed in "a popular author's first book" and results came back with Toni Morrison, mostly because of Oprah choosing it as a book club read. I now realize that the author was trying to talk about racism in this book in a very strange way, which is probably why Oprah chose it.
I did not enjoy this book for two reasons. For the first half of the book, I was confused who the book was about. When I got to the second part it turned very sexual and sad and made me want to literally throw. Most people that have reviewed this book discuss about how well it is written and talks about how this is our society, how we long for beauty, how we judge, and how it's no surprise the author won a nobel peace prize. Despite all the praise, I couldn't even begin to think about the author winning the nobel peace prize because of the details in the book, that, again, just made me want to throw up. So maybe the author is a good writer because of the deep emotion I felt. Half glass full right?
One thing that stuck out in this book is found in the very first part called Autumn. Three friends meet and Pecola gets her period. Either they had moms that didn't prepare them well enough for this stage in their lives or back then they didn't talk about it like we do now. These friends at first thought she hurt herself and then realized she was "minstrating." One of the friends, Frieda, had obviously heard adults talking and pieced together what she thought she knew about the subject retorting that Pecola was now a woman and could have a baby. After this part of the book I found myself pondering what would it be like to just start bleeding one day and knowing absolutely nothing about why you were bleeding. The fear you must feel, I cant even imagine.
Overall I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars.
This book is written for adults, and honestly the only reason I read it is because I was searching for a book to help me complete my 2015 reading challenge. To complete my challenge, I needed to read a book where it was classified as a popular authors first book. So, I headed to Google and typed in "a popular author's first book" and results came back with Toni Morrison, mostly because of Oprah choosing it as a book club read. I now realize that the author was trying to talk about racism in this book in a very strange way, which is probably why Oprah chose it.
I did not enjoy this book for two reasons. For the first half of the book, I was confused who the book was about. When I got to the second part it turned very sexual and sad and made me want to literally throw. Most people that have reviewed this book discuss about how well it is written and talks about how this is our society, how we long for beauty, how we judge, and how it's no surprise the author won a nobel peace prize. Despite all the praise, I couldn't even begin to think about the author winning the nobel peace prize because of the details in the book, that, again, just made me want to throw up. So maybe the author is a good writer because of the deep emotion I felt. Half glass full right?
One thing that stuck out in this book is found in the very first part called Autumn. Three friends meet and Pecola gets her period. Either they had moms that didn't prepare them well enough for this stage in their lives or back then they didn't talk about it like we do now. These friends at first thought she hurt herself and then realized she was "minstrating." One of the friends, Frieda, had obviously heard adults talking and pieced together what she thought she knew about the subject retorting that Pecola was now a woman and could have a baby. After this part of the book I found myself pondering what would it be like to just start bleeding one day and knowing absolutely nothing about why you were bleeding. The fear you must feel, I cant even imagine.
Overall I rate this book 2 out of 4 stars.