The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

As I sat here, thinking about how to convey my feelings and heartbreak over reading The Bluest Eye, my phone notification tells me that Toni Morrison, Novel Laureate and Pulitizer Prize winner has died at age 88. Her long life was a gift to literature and to arts. That her death comes after two days of media coverage surrounding back to back mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton makes a kind of literary sense in that Toni Morrison was ever a critic of our culture and the often banal cruelty inflicted on minorities, women, and children. 

In The Bluest Eye, Morrison set out to detail and chronicle the destruction of innocence in the literal break down of Pecola, a twelve year old girl who, by the end of the novel, has suffered cruelties minor and grievous resulting in her complete psychotic break. And the language Morrison uses to describe this degradation, its smooth flow and lyrical beauty can make you forget that you are reading something abjectly terrible. And it is, abjectly terrible, and difficult to read, and yet, Morrison pulls no punches. She wants you to be aware of the ways in which humans are capable of destroying other humans. 

“Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another--physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.” 
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

When you pick up a Toni Morrison novel you better be ready for your heart to break in ways you didn't know existed. That the Bluest Eye was the first such novel in a series of ever sharpening craft, that she was actually disappointed in later years at her inability to create a more seamless piece of art, is a testament to the growth and skill she acquired as she toiled at this work. 

And Morrison was ever sure of herself and the place in the literary universe where her novels lived. I once saw a interview an Australian morning show did with her where the journalist asked Toni if she would ever consider writing books about white characters. Toni looked this woman dead in the eye for an uncomfortable amount of silence for TV purposes and asked if the journalist had any idea how racist such a question was? 

That such a voice has left the literary world is no question a loss, but we can be grateful for the body of work she leaves behind.

4/5 Stars.