Book Spotlight @ReadNobels: The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

  • Wednesday, March 09, 2016



I'm hosting the first ever Read the Nobels 2016 Reading Challenge. You can join in any time of the year and all it takes is to read one book written by a Nobel Prize for Literature laureate. You can sign up HERE. This is part of a bigger, perpetual challenge. If you'd like to get more Nobel Prize winning literature in your TBRs in your lifetime, check out the Read the Nobels blog.

Every few weeks, I feature a book and/or a Nobel Prize for Literature Laureate. Here's the fourth featured book, thrice reviewed on the Read the Nobels blog:

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1993 was awarded to Toni Morrison "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality (nobelprize.org).


Synopsis of The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison: Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in.Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison s virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing."


Review snippets from Read the Nobels 

Don't forget to check out the links for full reviews:

What do I think about the book? It was amazing, you feel every single bit of pain, physical or emotional, and you want to cry quietly for half of the characters. Is NOT a feel good book, but is a powerful one. The way the environment is constructed, as I mentioned, transports you to every house in the community, you feel the scents, the sun or the cold of winter. You want to take Pecola in your arms and tell her that she is a beautiful human being, that nothing happening around her is her fault. You want to slap her fathers and make them snap out of their pain constructed reality. - A Girl That Likes Books

I enjoyed The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison very much, notably because it skilfully shows how the social environment shapes the individual… and breaks without mercy those who are the weakest. It’s a meritorious book that all parents and teachers should read to remind them of their responsibility and power. - Edith, Edith's Miscellany

Find out more about Toni Morrison:


Other books by Toni Morrison:


* Affiliate link

Author photo: By derivative work: Entheta (talk) Toni_Morrison_2008.jpg: Angela Radulescu (Toni_Morrison_2008.jpg) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0) or CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons



No comments

Post a Comment




© guiltless readingMaira Gall