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The Bluest Eye (Vintage International) Paperback – May 8, 2007
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In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—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. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.
Here, Morrison’s writing is “so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry” (The New York Times).
- Print length206 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateMay 8, 2007
- Dimensions8 x 5.25 x 0.8 inches
- ISBN-100307278441
- ISBN-13978-0307278449
- Lexile measure920L
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From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews
Review
A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK!
“So precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry.” —The New York Times
“A profoundly successful work of fiction. . . . Taut and understated, harsh in its detachment, sympathetic in its truth . . . it is an experience.” —The Detroit Free Press
“This story commands attention, for it contains one black girl’s universe.” —Newsweek
About the Author
TONI MORRISON is the author of eleven novels and three essay collections. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 the Nobel Prize in Literature. She died in 2019.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
School has started, and Frieda and I get new brown stockings and cod-liver oil. Grown-ups talk in tired, edgy voices about Zick's Coal Company and take us along in the evening to the railroad tracks where we fill burlap sacks with the tiny pieces of coal lying about. Later we walk home, glancing back to see the great carloads of slag being dumped, red hot and smoking, into the ravine that skirts the steel mill. The dying fire lights the sky with a dull orange glow. Frieda and I lag behind, staring at the patch of color surrounded by black. It is impossible not to feel a shiver when our feet leave the gravel path and sink into the dead grass in the field.
Our house is old, cold, and green. At night a kerosene lamp lights one large room. The others are braced in darkness, peopled by roaches and mice. Adults do not talk to us -- they give us directions. They issue orders without providing information. When we trip and fall down they glance at us; if we cut or bruise ourselves, they ask us are we crazy. When we catch colds, they shake their heads in disgust at our lack of consideration. How, they ask us, do you expect anybody to get anything done if you all are sick? We cannot answer them. Our illness is treated with contempt, foul Black Draught, and castor oil that blunts our minds.
When, on a day after a trip to collect coal, I cough once, loudly, through bronchial tubes already packed tight with phlegm, my mother frowns. "Great Jesus. Get on in that bed. How many times do I have to tell you to wear something on your head? You must be the biggest fool in this town. Frieda? Get some rags and stuff that window."
Frieda restuffs the window. I trudge off to bed, full of guilt and self-pity. I lie down in my underwear, the metal in the black garters hurts my legs, but I do not take them off, because it is too cold to lie stockingless. It takes a long time for my body to heat its place in the bed. Once I have generated a silhouette of warmth, I dare not move, for there is a cold place one-half inch in any direction. No one speaks to me or asks how I feel. In an hour or two my mother comes. Her hands are large and rough, and when she rubs the Vicks salve on my chest, I am rigid with pain. She takes two fingers' full of it at a time, and massages my chest until I am faint. Just when I think I will tip over into a scream, she scoops out a little of the salve on her forefinger and puts it in my mouth, telling me to swallow. A hot flannel is wrapped about my neck and chest. I am covered up with heavy quilts and ordered to sweat, which I do, promptly.
Later I throw up, and my mother says, "What did you puke on the bed clothes for? Don't you have sense enough to hold your head out the bed? Now, look what you did. You think I got time for nothing but washing up your puke?"
The puke swaddles down the pillow onto the sheet -- green-gray, with flecks of orange. It moves like the insides of an uncooked egg. Stubbornly clinging to its own mass, refusing to break up and be removed. How, I wonder, can it be so neat and nasty at the same time?
My mother's voice drones on. She is not talking to me. She is talking to the puke, but she is calling it my name: Claudia. She wipes it up as best she can and puts a scratchy towel over the large wet place. I lie down again. The rags have fallen from the window crack, and the air is cold. I dare not call her back and am reluctant to leave my warmth. My mother's anger humiliates me; her words chafe my cheeks, and I am crying. I do not know that she is not angry at me, but at my sickness. I believe she despises my weakness for letting the sickness "take holt." By and by I will not get sick; I will refuse to. But for now I am crying. I know I am making more snot, but I can't stop.
My sister comes in. Her eyes are full of sorrow. She sings to me: "When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls, someone thinks of me. . . ." I doze, thinking of plums, walls, and "someone."
But was it really like that? As painful as I remember? Only mildly. Or rather, it was a productive and fructifying pain. Love, thick and dark as Alaga syrup, eased up into that cracked window. I could smell it -- taste it -- sweet, musty, with an edge of wintergreen in its base -- everywhere in that house. It stuck, along with my tongue, to the frosted windowpanes. It coated my chest, along with the salve, and when the flannel came undone in my sleep, the clear, sharp curves of air outlined its presence on my throat. And in the night, when my coughing was dry and tough, feet padded into the room, hands repinned the flannel, readjusted the quilt, and rested a moment on my forehead. So when I think of autumn, I think of somebody with hands who does not want me to die.
Product details
- Publisher : Vintage; Reprint edition (May 8, 2007)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 206 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0307278441
- ISBN-13 : 978-0307278449
- Lexile measure : 920L
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 8 x 5.25 x 0.8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,832 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #31 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
- #57 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)
- #252 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Toni Morrison was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993. She is the author of several novels, including The Bluest Eye, Beloved (made into a major film), and Love. She has received the National Book Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize. She is the Robert F. Goheen Professor at Princeton University.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers praise the book's brilliant prose and consider it excellent reading for humanities classes, with one describing it as the best piece of American literature. The story is heart-wrenching and makes readers feel a range of emotions, while being timeless and insightful with lots of learning and perspectives. The book is considered a must-read for everyone, particularly when read with a group. While the characters are well-developed, some customers express mixed feelings about them.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book highly readable and brilliant, particularly noting its value for humanities classes, with one customer describing it as the best piece of American literature.
"...helps that her writing is strong and interesting with many, many beautiful, powerful lines that moved my heart...." Read more
"...that engages with beauty, poverty, perception, love, sex, sexuality, friendship, bullying,..." Read more
"...Great read but I would suggest reading another one of her books like Sula or Song of Solomon as this is definitely the hardest book, emotionally..." Read more
"...The novel explores themes of racial identity, beauty standards, and the devastating effects of internalized racism on individuals and..." Read more
Customers praise the writing style of the book, noting its brilliant prose and poetic language, with one customer describing it as a beautiful way of telling a story.
"...It definitely helps that her writing is strong and interesting with many, many beautiful, powerful lines that moved my heart...." Read more
"...to offering beautifully written lyrical prose and a means of discussing narrative form, this novel gives a powerful opening to discussions of power,..." Read more
"...The book is written very beautifully and is filled with a cold dose of reality for people who have not experienced oppression or societal pressure..." Read more
"...Compelling Narrative: Toni Morrison's writing is beautifully poetic, drawing readers into the lives of the characters with vivid descriptions and..." Read more
Customers find the book thought-provoking and educational, with one customer noting how it sheds light on important societal issues, while another mentions how history and experience shape individuals.
"...It definitely helps that her writing is strong and interesting with many, many beautiful, powerful lines that moved my heart...." Read more
"...of discussing narrative form, this novel gives a powerful opening to discussions of power, hegemony, heterosexism and classism and would be ideal to..." Read more
"...The book is written very beautifully and is filled with a cold dose of reality for people who have not experienced oppression or societal pressure..." Read more
"...Social Commentary: The novel serves as a powerful social commentary on the damaging effects of racism and the perpetuation of beauty standards that..." Read more
Customers appreciate the length of the story, finding it ever relevant and timeless, with one customer highlighting its multi-generational narrative structure.
"...For the most part, however, I felt that Morrison does a good job moving the plot forward...." Read more
"...Using a multi-generational storyline and a cast of female characters, Morrison challenges readers to think about where women get their sense of..." Read more
"...much a story about our perceptions of beauty and the world and story about innocence and the loss of innocence...." Read more
"...I do agree with other reviewers that the way the story is told is a little disjointed and aspects of the story and characters are underdeveloped...." Read more
Customers find this book to be a must-read, particularly noting it's best suited for mature readers and should be read with a group. One customer mentions finishing the entire book in one sitting.
"...This text has and will continue to be read and reread within schools because of rather than in spite of the violence and sexual content as the novel..." Read more
"The reader is introduced to several children, where their lives are different, and in some ways, the same...." Read more
"...You will be enthralled while reading." Read more
"...The Bluest Eye is both bold and impactful, and not suitable for children...." Read more
Customers praise the author's brilliance, with one noting her unique way of expressing herself.
"I love the author. The book is an easy read and is based on children who wished they were different." Read more
"...is one of the most gifted authors on earth...." Read more
"...I couldnt lay it down. this author is superb, she tells the story so well its spellbinding." Read more
"...deny that Tony Morrison’s writings ranks among that of the greatest American authors...." Read more
Customers have mixed reactions to the heartbreaking story of the book, with many describing it as heart wrenching and incredibly sad, while others find it poignant.
"...into the lives of the characters with vivid descriptions and emotive prose...." Read more
"...scenes of domestic violence, rape, and sex, as well as a pervasive sense of hopelessness...." Read more
"...the characters, almost explaining why they are the way they are, nasty, evil, ugly, beautiful and soulful, for examples...." Read more
"...Morrison is relentless in making her point and the tone of this novel is sad, hopeless, and desperate...." Read more
Customers have mixed opinions about the character development in the book, with some praising the well-developed characters while others express disinterest in them.
"...through the seasons of their existence, creating a cast of characters whose travails are well written and developed using non-linear sequencing..." Read more
"...The perspectives of various characters are interwoven, providing different viewpoints on the events of the novel and allowing readers to see the..." Read more
"...At the same time, it is terrible and brutal in its honest portrayal of the interlinking systems of oppression through race, class, gender, and age...." Read more
"...One of my favorite aspects of this book is the delivery of each character's story from birth to the present...." Read more
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Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on April 25, 2015The Bluest Eye is a classic for the powerful themes that continue to relate to society today. As Toni Morrison mentions in her foreword, we all know what it feels like to be disliked or rejected, be it for a moment or for a suspended period of time. Moving beyond this statement, we all know what it feels like to be dissatisfied with our appearance. Even if we are generally happy with how we look, there will be periods of time when we wish that we were "prettier." The media bombards with with images of the feminine (and masculine) ideal. Advertisements tell us how we can look sexier and be more confident (by buying their products). We are constantly told that we are not up to standard and ought to try harder to look like the ideal. The problem is that we can try our whole lives and never look like the "ideal." Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye examines the intersectionality of race, class, gender, and age in the oppression of black people through beauty ideals and the pressure to conform to them.
She does this through sketches in the lives of multiple characters of different backgrounds and across generations. Generally, I'm not very fond of novels that move around so much, as it makes it difficult to get to know any particular character, but this technique works for Morrison's novel. Rather than events moving the plot forward (like most novels), the plot takes us through the lives of different characters in order to show how the white beauty ideal influences black people of different temperaments, class, and circumstances . . . causing them to internalize racism. This does mean that there is a lot of narrating going on. At times, I even found it hard to focus on the page. For the most part, however, I felt that Morrison does a good job moving the plot forward. It definitely helps that her writing is strong and interesting with many, many beautiful, powerful lines that moved my heart. Once I started The Bluest Eye, I was reluctant to put down the novel for lengthy periods of time.
Most importantly, these sketches show us how people come to be the people that they are today. Humans are not born to be terrible. The way our natures interact with the environment to which we are exposed shapes our character. There were characters who I disliked early in the book only to realize later that they were not such terrible beings. At least, not at first. Things happened, and maybe their response wasn't the healthiest, but they lived at some point in their lives. Until they internalized racism and began to believe that they deserved the bad things that happened to them. That people couldn't change. The most notable example of the influence of internalized racism is in the home of the Breedloves. Learning about the lives and thoughts of Mrs. and Mr. Breedlove helped me to better understand the environment in which Pecola grew up. Thinking about how Pecola and her brother's lives could have been different helped me to realize how oppression not only influences the people with whom it comes into immediate contact but also their children and the generations to come. (Compare the parenting Pecola receives to the parenting Claudia receives.)
I also want to note how Morrison uses the Dick and Jane primer to emphasize the psychological element to oppression. The Dick and Jane primer portrays the ideal white family. The way its grammar and structure falls apart in the first pages of the novel reminds me of horror movies where a seemingly benign and pleasant scene falls apart to become something terrifying. In the same way, the lives of the black families, particularly that of the Breedloves, will upend in The Bluest Eye. The inclusion of distorted sections of the primer at the beginning of certain chapters foreshadows this.
The Bluest Eye is haunting and beautiful. At the same time, it is terrible and brutal in its honest portrayal of the interlinking systems of oppression through race, class, gender, and age. There are explicit scenes of domestic violence, rape, and sex, as well as a pervasive sense of hopelessness. Nevertheless, there is life, love, and tenderness behind seemingly harsh acts. As Claudia says at the beginning of the novel, "since why is hard to handle, one must take refuge in how." Building upon this statement, if we can learn how things come to be, then we can learn how to ensure history does not repeat itself. We can learn how to keep future generations from sharing Pecola's end.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 3, 2015Listed as one of the most often challenged or banned books, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye warrants being read, reread, and discussed. It offers avenues through which powerful conversations can occur, and our teachers as much as our students need to engage with this complex text. The Bluest Eye is a lyrically written painfully beautiful narrative with a didactic style (especially when compared with the more oft taught canonical American Novels that represent time as linear and plot as a series of events that build toward a crescendo) that engages with beauty, poverty, perception, love, sex, sexuality, friendship, bullying, birth, death, happiness and cruelty. It is a coming of age story that may at first seem to lightly dismiss topics that would, in other works, serve as climactic tragedies. Rape, incest, domestic violence and death serve, in the context of the novel, as almost a backdrop that sets off the real insidious danger that pervades the lived experiences and interactions the characters have throughout the course of the novel: idealized beauty. This idealized beauty is intertwined with issues of race, class, and gender and this novel and serves as a metaphor for a variety of social ills. In addition to offering beautifully written lyrical prose and a means of discussing narrative form, this novel gives a powerful opening to discussions of power, hegemony, heterosexism and classism and would be ideal to discuss various lenses through which we as scholars read not only our novels but our lives.
Although the novel includes topics that could be seen as unsavory, they are far from gratuitous and are absolutely essential to the themes being investigated: in addition to beauty, power dynamics, social mores, institutionalized racism in schools and other timely topics are all included. In the scope of the novel the sexual violences are enmeshed with the overall narrative that questions the effects of a culture which values a rigid ideal of beauty, an ideal that is realized only by white children with blonde hair, and follows characters through the seasons of their existence, creating a cast of characters whose travails are well written and developed using non-linear sequencing which adds to the destabilizing effect of the prose.
This novel would fit well in a curriculum that asks students to investigate questions of power, compares narrative voices and various ways in which stories are told, or as a suggested text for an individual research project on societal norms or stereotypes. Students who have read Sharon Flake’s The Skin I’m In or Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak in middle school will be challenged and rewarded with The Bluest Eye, as it develops themes from such works and provides richer and more mature text. This text is suggested by the Common core to be read in grade 11 or 12 and would pair well with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Faulkner’s As I lay Dying (specifically investigating the different approaches to discussing sexism by the various characters within the text, for example asking students to discussing how their age, class and race may influence the character’s perceptions of how they are treated.) Another familiar text for students to use to compare and discuss is Hamlet (Students could be asked to think about Ophelia and Hamlet’s interactions through the various critical lenses of gender/feminism, class and power.)
Overall, despite the challenges The Bluest Eye has received to being taught in the classroom, the overwhelming opportunities for rich discussion and the literary merit of the book far outweigh any challenge related to teaching it. This text has and will continue to be read and reread within schools because of rather than in spite of the violence and sexual content as the novel asks students, teachers, and readers in general to question stereotypes and ideals of beauty and success. I highly recommend it!
Top reviews from other countries
- John HawkeReviewed in Canada on March 22, 2022
5.0 out of 5 stars Pure Poetry
I read this book because it was banned. I was looking to see why it was given that sentence. What I found was a story that reflected something that was neither black or white but struggle in an awful world.
As white man I feel shame as what men do to women and we hold the colour of our skin over others as if we somehow should be elevated over them. We are all humans and should act that way!
The Bluest Eye should be read by everyone. You will learn the power of words.
- Shatarupa DharReviewed in India on May 11, 2020
5.0 out of 5 stars A book that will devastate you and make you uncomfortable with its truth
Synopsis:
Nine-year-old Claudia lives with her parents and her ten-year-old sister. In her nine-year-old narrative, she remembers Pecola who was placed with them by child care services. Pecola, who becomes a woman from a ten-year-old girl while she lives with them. Pecola's life with her family is shown next, where her brand of life makes her wish that she had the bluest eye thinking that it may have made her more loveable and more acceptable. But life is not that simple, as there are more hardships in the life of that little girl with unimaginable consequences.
Review:
This is my second Morrison and it doesn't get any easier. But in this case, the first book written by her, the difficult thing was to read it without it devastating me. There's this sense of impending doom even with the little bit of innocence that there is.
This one starts with a description of a family, in the midst of war and depression in the 1940s, and its way of narration reminded me of this (which seems quite silly now) children's song in Hindi - Aao Milo Seelo Saalo. We used to clap animatedly, after pairing up with another person, while reciting the rhyme in a complete sing-song voice. Of course, this is a story narrated by a nine-year-old child which at once drips with innocence while carrying a vat of pain. The beginning itself will numb you because it's evident that this story is going to be full of agony. But it is equally interesting to note how such a complex, 'grown-up' story was narrated in part by such a young child. Especially when we often refuse to believe them to be worldly-wise and aware, to the extent of having banned the book then, in schools and libraries.
"Jealousy we understood and thought natural – a desire to have what somebody else had; but envy was a strange, new feeling for us."
What is beauty? Most of us, in one way or other, can be accused of defining beauty through unnatural standards. I share the blame for being harsh on not only others but myself. And however much we speak about inner beauty is the only thing that matters, some of us also have tried the rub-de-dub once in a while, for that glowing, fairer skin. An unnecessary legacy that resurfaces in almost all the dark-skinned Indian households every once in a while.
Was that magical realism when Pecola wished for herself to disappear? How sad I felt for her, even before her major problems began. To be living with constantly feuding parents, to be wishing for death. Either for self or the others. And to feel such an inadequacy that she ended up wanting blue eyes, it was all so heart-breaking.
"All were engrossed in early-night reminiscences about dreams, figures, premonitions. Their stuffed comfort was narcotic and had produced recollections and fabrications of hallucinations."
Pecola's experience with the White Mr Yacobowski reminded me of Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand. Quite the same premise, where shame at being less than deserving morphs into anger for the inequality that is there in the world. I was astounded at the way Morrison not only wrote about Pecola's inferiority complex of being an African-American in a White community but also inserted internalised racism in the form of a mixed-race girl and how a scale is brought out to measure who is lighter in the skin and prettier than whom.
The overbearing – will do what I want to, others (especially women) be damned – men of this story need to be mentioned too. Pecola's father's childhood doesn't let me hate him, while his deeds do not make me like him! This was a female-dominated story, with a major chunk of the characters being female, especially the three prostitutes who are a major part of the story even after them not being one of the central characters. But will I call it a feminist story? I honestly don't know, since this is such a sad story where women don't seem to understand the plight of a young girl, where apart from men, women are also bringing down others of their kind, be it conditioning or judgement.
"He responded to his father's controlled violence by developing hard habits and a soft imagination."
Divided into four parts, each a season, the squalor in which them Black people live is described in stark detail. While it is Pecola's story, the weight of the narration falls on young Claudia's shoulders which she does in the first-person. But, interspersed is Cholly (Charlie) and Polly (Pauline) Breedlove's story in third-person narration. (I wonder as to the significance behind their names?) It is followed by a dialogue at the end, the same dialogue that wrecked me.
"We looked for eyes creased with concern, but saw only veil."
Maybe Sula wasn't it for me since The Bluest Eye hit me right where it hurt. I remember Baishakhi's @thebooklizz Instagram Post where she mentions feeling unsettled after reading a Morrison. That is what I felt too, after reading this one. It made me uncomfortable with its truth.
P.S. I read this book as a part of Toni Morrison Book Club by Aayushi @_penandpapers, where we pick up one book by the author every month. This was the February pick.
This is also my entry for Prompt 18 of the Reading Women Challenge 2018: A Book by a female Nobel Prize winner.
Originally posted on:
My Blog @ Shaina's Musings
-
PedroReviewed in Brazil on October 31, 2020
5.0 out of 5 stars Um história comovente e necessária
Um dos melhores livros que li ultimamente. Que narrativa. Que olhar sobre o racismo e suas ramificações na psiquê dessas famílias partidas. Uma lição lúdica e poética sobre racismo estrutural e real
- Sylvia FrandsenReviewed in Germany on September 23, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars A Literary classsic
Toni Morrisson was great writer.
Amazing when you read about what type of background she came from.
I read the book many years ago and re-reading it made me enjoy it even more.
- ZephyrReviewed in the Netherlands on September 21, 2024
4.0 out of 5 stars A good read.
I love the style of writing.