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| toni morrison the bluest eye: The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison, 2007-05-08 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace. 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). |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Toni Morrison's the Bluest Eye Harold Bloom, 2007 A child's descent into madness was explored in Eye. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Toni Morrison Box Set Toni Morrison, 2019-10-29 A box set of Toni Morrison's principal works, featuring The Bluest Eye (her first novel), Beloved (Pulitzer Prize winner), and Song of Solomon (National Book Critics Award winner). Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, Beloved transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as intimate as a lullaby. This spellbinding novel tells the story of Sethe, a former slave who escapes to Ohio, but eighteen years later is still not free. In The New York Times bestselling novel, The Bluest Eye, Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty and 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. With Song of Solomon, Morrison transfigures the coming-of-age story as she follows Milkman Dead from his rustbelt city to the place of his family's origins, introducing an entire cast of strivers and seeresses, liars and assassins, the inhabitants of a fully realized black world. This beautifully designed slipcase will make the perfect holiday and perennial gift. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Paradise Toni Morrison, 2014-03-11 The acclaimed Nobel Prize winner challenges our most fiercely held beliefs as she weaves folklore and history, memory and myth into an unforgettable meditation on race, religion, gender, and a far-off past that is ever present—in prose that soars with the rhythms, grandeur, and tragic arc of an epic poem. “They shoot the white girl first. With the rest they can take their time.” So begins Toni Morrison’s Paradise, which opens with a horrifying scene of mass violence and chronicles its genesis in an all-black small town in rural Oklahoma. Founded by the descendants of freed slaves and survivors in exodus from a hostile world, the patriarchal community of Ruby is built on righteousness, rigidly enforced moral law, and fear. But seventeen miles away, another group of exiles has gathered in a promised land of their own. And it is upon these women in flight from death and despair that nine male citizens of Ruby will lay their pain, their terror, and their murderous rage. “A fascinating story, wonderfully detailed. . . . The town is the stage for a profound and provocative debate.” —Los Angeles Times |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Sula Toni Morrison, 2002-04-05 Sula and Nel are born in the Bottom—a small town at the top of a hill. Sula is wild, and daring; she does what she wants, while Nel is well-mannered, a mamma’s girl with a questioning heart. Growing up they forge a bond stronger than anything, stronger even than the dark secret they have to bear. Strong enough, it seems, to last a lifetime—until, decades later, as the girls become women, Sula’s anarchy leads to a betrayal that may be beyond forgiveness. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Masterful, richly textured, bittersweet, and vital, Sula is a modern masterpiece about love and kinship, about living in an America birthed from slavery. Nobel Prize laureate Toni Morrison gives life to characters who struggle with what society tells them to be, and the love they long for and crave as Black women. Most of all, they ask: When can we let go? What must we hold back? And just how much can be shared in a friendship? |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: A Sea of Troubles Elizabeth James, B.H. James, 2021-04-19 Sea of Troubles has been designed for classroom teachers struggling to address the overwhelming issues facing our world today. By embracing the Common Core’s emphasis on the inclusion of more nonfiction, informational texts, the authors have demonstrated how to incorporate meaningful informational texts into their favorite units of literature. Sea of Troubles shows teachers how literature and informational texts can work together, to enhance each other, and, by extension, enhance student’s abilities to critically think and respond to the sea of troubles that pervades society. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: The Bluest Eye Christopher Hubert, 2012-06-22 REA's MAXnotes for Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, A Novel MAXnotes offer a fresh look at masterpieces of literature, presented in a lively and interesting fashion. Written by literary experts who currently teach the subject, MAXnotes will enhance your understanding and enjoyment of the work. MAXnotes are designed to stimulate independent thought about the literary work by raising various issues and thought-provoking ideas and questions. MAXnotes cover the essentials of what one should know about each work, including an overall summary, character lists, an explanation and discussion of the plot, the work's historical context, illustrations to convey the mood of the work, and a biography of the author. Each chapter is individually summarized and analyzed, and has study questions and answers. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison, 1990 The Bluest Eye (1970) is the first novel written by Toni Morrison. It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who 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. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Toni Morrison's the Bluest Eye Toni Morrison, 2014-12 |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Toni Morrison's the Bluest Eye Harold Bloom, 1999 |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye , 2007 Cast: 2 to 3m, 6 to 10w. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: The End of Obscenity Charles Rembar, 2015-07-21 George Polk Award Winner: This account of American book banning and the battles against it is a tour de force to fascinate lawyers and laymen alike” (The New York Times Book Review). Up until the 1960s, depending on your state of residence, your copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer might be seized by the US Postal Service before reaching your mailbox. Selling copies of Cleland’s Fanny Hill in your bookstore was considered illegal. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence was, according to the American legal system, pornography with no redeeming social value. Today, these novels are celebrated for their literary and historic worth. The End of Obscenity is Charles Rembar’s account of successfully arguing the merits of such great works of literature in front of the Supreme Court. As the lead attorney on the case, he—with the support of a few brave publishers—changed the way Americans read and honor books, especially the controversial ones. Filled with insight from lawyers, justices, and the authors themselves, The End of Obscenity is a lively tour de force. Racy testimony and hilarious asides make Rembar’s memoir not only a page-turner but also an enlightening look at the American legal system. “[Rembar’s] book deals not with the why of obscenity laws but with the how . . . many of his anecdotal digressions into history and law are sharp and amusing.” —The New Republic |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Beloved Toni Morrison, 2006-10-17 Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a spellbinding and dazzlingly innovative portrait of a woman haunted by the past. One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Sethe was born a slave and escaped to Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has borne the unthinkable and not gone mad, yet she is still held captive by memories of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. Meanwhile Sethe’s house has long been troubled by the angry, destructive ghost of her baby, who died nameless and whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Sethe works at beating back the past, but it makes itself heard and felt incessantly in her memory and in the lives of those around her. When a mysterious teenage girl arrives, calling herself Beloved, Sethe’s terrible secret explodes into the present. Combining the visionary power of legend with the unassailable truth of history, Morrison’s unforgettable novel is one of the great and enduring works of American literature. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: The Source of Self-Regard Toni Morrison, 2020-01-14 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Here is the Nobel Prize winner in her own words: a rich gathering of her most important essays and speeches, spanning four decades that speaks to today’s social and political moment as directly as this morning’s headlines” (NPR). These pages give us her searing prayer for the dead of 9/11, her Nobel lecture on the power of language, her searching meditation on Martin Luther King Jr., her heart-wrenching eulogy for James Baldwin. She looks deeply into the fault lines of culture and freedom: the foreigner, female empowerment, the press, money, “black matter(s),” human rights, the artist in society, the Afro-American presence in American literature. And she turns her incisive critical eye to her own work (The Bluest Eye, Sula, Tar Baby, Jazz, Beloved, Paradise) and that of others. An essential collection from an essential writer, The Source of Self-Regard shines with the literary elegance, intellectual prowess, spiritual depth, and moral compass that have made Toni Morrison our most cherished and enduring voice. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Disgruntled Asali Solomon, 2015-02-03 Novel about a young black girl coming of age in Philadelphia in the late '80s and early '90s-- |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: The Cambridge Companion to Toni Morrison Justine Tally, 2007-09-13 Nobel laureate Toni Morrison is one of the most widely studied of contemporary American authors. Her novels, particularly Beloved, have had a dramatic impact on the American canon and attracted considerable critical commentary. This 2007 Companion introduces and examines her oeuvre as a whole, the first evaluation to include not only her famous novels, but also her other literary works (short story, drama, musical, and opera), her social and literary criticism, and her career as an editor and teacher. Innovative contributions from internationally recognized critics and academics discuss Morrison's themes, narrative techniques, language and political philosophy, and explain the importance of her work to American studies and world literature. This comprehensive and accessible approach, together with a chronology and guide to further reading, makes this an essential book for students and scholars of African American literature. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: "Dick-and-Jane Primer" in Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" as an Aesthetic Device Shaimaa Radhi, 2017-07-03 Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject American Studies - Literature, , language: English, abstract: The focus of this paper is the narrative mechanism of employing a paragraph of Dick and Jane Reader, which was popular in children schools in 1940s in the American United States. It educates children how to read and they hear it from the very beginning of their lives. Through such an educational system, the white dominant culture exerts its authority in oppressing black people. In her novel The Bluest Eye, the African-American writer Toni Morrison cuts an expert of Dick and Jane narrative and uses it as a prologue. She repeats the paragraph three times which are highly different from each other, then dismembers it into pieces that appear as headings to some chapters of the novel. The study reveals the aesthetic purpose beyond such reproducing and dismembering of Dick and Jane narrative. Morrison sends a message of moral content to blacks as well as whites: On the one hand, blacks, particularly those who immersed in the white ideology, have to wake up and realize the value of their culture, heritage and language in protecting their black identity. On the other hand, whites should respect and admit the cultural and humane existence of the other and realize the merit of the black culture. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Black Looks & Black Acts Ritashona Simpson, 2007 How does Toni Morrison use language to represent race? Answering this question through literary criticism and linguistic research, this book shows how Morrison's language reflects the souls of black folk in The Bluest Eye and Beloved. The book focuses on the way in which Morrison forces language to reveal what cannot be spoken by a «black» grammar. To achieve the breaking of this silence, Morrison uses rhetoric, voice, and narrative structures not conventionally used to achieve the effect of «black English.» Students and teachers of Toni Morrison's novels and black English will find this book useful. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: A Study Guide for Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye Gale, Cengage Learning, 2015-09-15 A Study Guide for Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: God Help the Child Toni Morrison, 2015-04-21 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A New York Times Notable Book • This fiery and provocative novel from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner weaves a tale about the way the sufferings of childhood can shape, and misshape, the life of the adult. At the center: a young woman who calls herself Bride, whose stunning blue-black skin is only one element of her beauty, her boldness and confidence, her success in life, but which caused her light-skinned mother to deny her even the simplest forms of love. There is Booker, the man Bride loves, and loses to anger. Rain, the mysterious white child with whom she crosses paths. And finally, Bride’s mother herself, Sweetness, who takes a lifetime to come to understand that “what you do to children matters. And they might never forget.” “Powerful.... A tale that is as forceful as it is affecting, as fierce as it is resonant.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Goodness and the Literary Imagination Toni Morrison, 2019-10-01 What exactly is goodness? Where is it found in the literary imagination? Toni Morrison, one of American letters’ greatest voices, pondered these perplexing questions in her celebrated Ingersoll Lecture, delivered at Harvard University in 2012 and published now for the first time in book form. Perhaps because it is overshadowed by the more easily defined evil, goodness often escapes our attention. Recalling many literary examples, from Ahab to Coetzee’s Michael K, Morrison seeks the essence of goodness and ponders its significant place in her writing. She considers the concept in relation to unforgettable characters from her own works of fiction and arrives at conclusions that are both eloquent and edifying. In a lively interview conducted for this book, Morrison further elaborates on her lecture’s ideas, discussing goodness not only in literature but in society and history—particularly black history, which has responded to centuries of brutality with profound creativity. Morrison’s essay is followed by a series of responses by scholars in the fields of religion, ethics, history, and literature to her thoughts on goodness and evil, mercy and love, racism and self-destruction, language and liberation, together with close examination of literary and theoretical expressions from her works. Each of these contributions, written by a scholar of religion, considers the legacy of slavery and how it continues to shape our memories, our complicities, our outcries, our lives, our communities, our literature, and our faith. In addition, the contributors engage the religious orientation in Morrison’s novels so that readers who encounter her many memorable characters such as Sula, Beloved, or Frank Money will learn and appreciate how Morrison’s notions of goodness and mercy also reflect her understanding of the sacred and the human spirit. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison, 2007 Pecola Breedlove, a young eleven-year-old 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 the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dreams grow 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.--From publisher's description. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Writing the Survivor Robin E. Field, 2020-07-15 Writing the Survivor: The Rape Novel in Late Twentieth-Century American Fiction identifies a new genre of American fiction, the rape novel, that recenters narratives of sexual violence on the survivors of violence and abuse, rather than the perpetrators. The rape novel arose during the women’s liberation movement as women writers collectively challenged the traditional erasure of female subjectivity and agency found in earlier representations of sexual violence in American fiction. The rape novel not only foregrounds survivors and their stories in a textual centering that affirms their dignity and self-worth, but also develops new narratological strategies for portraying violent, disturbing subject matter. In bringing together many key women’s texts of the last decades of the 20th century, the rape novel demonstrates the centrality of sexual assault to women’s fiction of this era. The rape novels of the 21st century continue the political activism inherent in the genre—educating readers, offering community to survivors, and encouraging social activism—as the stories of male survivors are increasingly told. A radical reconsideration of late twentieth-century American novels, Writing the Survivor underscores the importance of women’s activism upon the novel’s form and content and reveals the portrayal of rape as rape to be an interethnic imperative. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: The Words in My Hands Asphyxia, 2021-11-09 Part coming of age, part call to action, this fast-paced #ownvoices novel about a Deaf teenager is a unique and inspiring exploration of what it means to belong. Smart, artistic, and independent, sixteen year old Piper is tired of trying to conform. Her mom wants her to be “normal,” to pass as hearing, to get a good job. But in a time of food scarcity, environmental collapse, and political corruption, Piper has other things on her mind—like survival. Piper has always been told that she needs to compensate for her Deafness in a world made for those who can hear. But when she meets Marley, a new world opens up—one where Deafness is something to celebrate, and where resilience means taking action, building a com-munity, and believing in something better. Published to rave reviews as Future Girl in Australia (Allen & Unwin, Sept. 2020), this empowering, unforgettable story is told through a visual extravaganza of text, paint, collage, and drawings. Set in an ominously prescient near future, The Words in My Hands is very much a novel for our turbulent times. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Seoulmates Jen Frederick, 2022-01-25 A Korean-American adoptee fights to be with the one she loves while coming to terms with her new identity in this enthralling romantic drama and sequel to Heart and Seoul by USA Today bestselling author Jen Frederick. When Hara Wilson lands in Seoul to find her birth mother, she doesn’t plan on falling in love with the first man she lays eyes on, but Choi Yujun is irresistible. If his broad shoulders and dimples weren’t enough, Choi Yujun is the most genuine, decent, gorgeous guy to exist. Too bad he’s also her stepbrother. Fate brought her to the Choi doorstep but the gift of family comes with burdens. A job in her mother’s company has perks of endless company dinners and super resentful coworkers. A new country means learning a new language which twenty-five year old Hara is finding to be a Herculean task. A forbidden love means having to choose between her birth family or Choi Yujun. All Hara wanted was to find a place to belong in this world—but in order to have it all, she’ll have to risk it all. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: The Story Behind Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye Mary Colson, 2006 Looks at how Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye explores the themes of race and identity and discusses how the author continues the traditions of African American storytelling. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Stepmotherland Darrel Alejandro Holnes, 2022-02-01 Stepmotherland is a tour-de-force debut collection about coming of age, coming out, and coming to America. Winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes’s first full-length collection, is filled with poems that chronicle and question identity, family, and allegiance. This Central American love song is in constant motion as it takes us on a lyrical and sometimes narrative journey from Panamá to the USA and beyond. The driving force behind Holnes’s work is a pursuit for a new home, and as he searches, he takes the reader on a wild ride through the most pressing political issues of our time and the most intimate and transformative personal experiences of his life. Exploring a complex range of emotions, this collection is a celebration of the discovery of America, the discovery of self, and the ways they may be one and the same. Holnes’s poems experiment with macaronic language, literary forms, and prosody. In their inventiveness, they create a new tradition that blurs the borders between poetry, visual art, and dramatic text. The new legacy he creates is one with significant reverence for the past, which informs a central desire of immigrants and native-born citizens alike: the desire for a better life. Stepmotherland documents an artist’s evolution into manhood and heralds the arrival of a stunning new poetic voice. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison, 2007-05 The story of Pecola Breedlove profiles an eleven-year-old African American girl growing up in an America that values blue-eyed blondes and the tragedy that results from her longing to be accepted. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: The Art of X-Ray Reading Roy Peter Clark, 2016-01-26 Roy Peter Clark, one of America's most influential writing teachers, offers writing lessons we can draw from 25 great texts. Where do writers learn their best moves? They use a technique that Roy Peter Clark calls X-ray reading, a form of reading that lets you penetrate beyond the surface of a text to see how meaning is actually being made. In The Art of X-Ray Reading, Clark invites you to don your X-ray reading glasses and join him on a guided tour through some of the most exquisite and masterful literary works of all time, from The Great Gatsby to Lolita to The Bluest Eye, and many more. Along the way, he shows you how to mine these masterpieces for invaluable writing strategies that you can add to your arsenal and apply in your own writing. Once you've experienced X-ray reading, your writing will never be the same again. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Conversations with Toni Morrison Toni Morrison, 1994 Collected interviews with the Nobel Prize winner in which she describes herself as an African American writer and that show her to be an artist whose creativity is intimately linked with her African American experience |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Beloved Amy Sickels, 2009 Arguably Toni Morrison's best novel, Beloved addresses the powerful legacy of slavery and those whose voices have been historically silenced by it. Awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988, Morrison's novel confronts the past in order to heal the present |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: The Taste of Salt Martha Southgate, 2011-09-13 Award-winning novelist Martha Southgate (who, in the words of Julia Glass, “can write fat and hot, then lush and tender, then just plain truthful and burning with heart”) now tells the story of a family pushed to its limits by addiction over the course of two generations. Josie Henderson loves the water and is fulfilled by her position as the only senior-level black scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. In building this impressive life for herself, she has tried to shed the one thing she cannot: her family back in landlocked Cleveland. Her adored brother, Tick, was her childhood ally as they watched their drinking father push away all the love that his wife and children were trying to give him. Now Tick himself has been coming apart and demands to be heard. Weaving four voices into a beautiful tapestry, Southgate charts the lives of the Hendersons from the parents’ first charmed meeting to Josie’s realization that the ways of the human heart are more complex than anything seen under a microscope. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Iola Leroy, or, Shadows Uplifted Frances E. W. Harper, 2012-08-30 This 1892 work was among the first novels published by an African-American woman. Its striking portrait of life during the Civil War and Reconstruction recounts a mixed-race woman's devotion to uplifting the black community. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: The Witch's Apprentice Zetta Elliott, 2022-01-18 The dragons may be out of the bag, but Jaxon is ready to hatch some magic of his own in this third book in the critically acclaimed series. Ever since the baby dragons were returned to the magical realm, things have been off. The New York summer has been unusually cold. A strange sleeping sickness is spreading across the city. And Jaxon’s friends Kenny and Kavita have begun to change, becoming more like the fairy and dragon they once cared for. On top of all that, Jax is hiding a secret—Vik entrusted him with a phoenix egg! Jax wants to help his friends and learn how to hatch the phoenix, but so far his lessons as a witch’s apprentice haven’t seemed very useful. Where can he find the strength—and the magic—he needs? |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Tar Baby Toni Morrison, 2007-07-24 A ravishingly beautiful and emotionally incendiary reinvention of the love story by the legendary Nobel Prize winner Jadine Childs is a Black fashion model with a white patron, a white boyfriend, and a coat made out of ninety perfect sealskins. Son is a Black fugitive who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, which plays out from the Caribbean to Manhattan and the deep South, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between Blacks and whites, masters and servants, and men and women. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Little Cloud and Lady Wind Toni Morrison, Slade Morrison, 2011-04-19 Little Cloud likes her own place in the sky, away from the other clouds. There, the sky is all hers. She is free to make her own way and go where she wishes. Can Lady Wind show Little Cloud the power of being with others? Will Little Cloud agree there is strength in unity and change her ways? A fresh take on a classic story, Little Cloud and Lady Wind will teach kids how to work together to achieve their goals. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: What We Lose Zinzi Clemmons, 2017-07-11 A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree NBCC John Leonard First Book Prize Finalist Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, NPR, Elle, Esquire, Buzzfeed, San Francisco Chronicle, Cosmopolitan, The Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, The Root, Harper’s Bazaar, Paste, Bustle, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, LitHub, New York Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Bust “The debut novel of the year.” —Vogue “Like so many stories of the black diaspora, What We Lose is an examination of haunting.” —Doreen St. Félix, The New Yorker “Raw and ravishing, this novel pulses with vulnerability and shimmering anger.” —Nicole Dennis-Benn, O, the Oprah Magazine “Stunning. . . . Powerfully moving and beautifully wrought, What We Lose reflects on family, love, loss, race, womanhood, and the places we feel home.” —Buzzfeed “Remember this name: Zinzi Clemmons. Long may she thrill us with exquisite works like What We Lose. . . . The book is a remarkable journey.” —Essence From an author of rare, haunting power, a stunning novel about a young African-American woman coming of age—a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, family, and country Raised in Pennsylvania, Thandi views the world of her mother’s childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present. She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. She tries to connect these dislocated pieces of her life, and as her mother succumbs to cancer, Thandi searches for an anchor—someone, or something, to love. In arresting and unsettling prose, we watch Thandi’s life unfold, from losing her mother and learning to live without the person who has most profoundly shaped her existence, to her own encounters with romance and unexpected motherhood. Through exquisite and emotional vignettes, Clemmons creates a stunning portrayal of what it means to choose to live, after loss. An elegiac distillation, at once intellectual and visceral, of a young woman’s understanding of absence and identity that spans continents and decades, What We Lose heralds the arrival of a virtuosic new voice in fiction. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Playing the Changes Craig Hansen Werner, 1994 A final sequence highlights the centrality of black music to African American writing, arguing that recognizing blues, gospel, and jazz as theoretically suggestive cultural practices rather than specific musical forms points to what is most distinctive in twentieth-century African American writing: its ability to subvert attempts to limit its engagement with psychological, historical, political, or aesthetic realities. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: A Mercy Toni Morrison, 2009-08-11 A powerful tragedy distilled into a small masterpiece by the Nobel Prize-winning author of Beloved and, almost like a prelude to that story, set two centuries earlier. Jacob is an Anglo-Dutch trader in 1680s United States, when the slave trade is still in its infancy. Reluctantly he takes a small slave girl in part payment from a plantation owner for a bad debt. Feeling rejected by her slave mother, 14-year-old Florens can read and write and might be useful on his farm. Florens looks for love, first from Lina, an older servant woman at her new master's house, but later from the handsome blacksmith, an African, never enslaved, who comes riding into their lives . . . At the novel's heart, like Beloved, it is the ambivalent, disturbing story of a mother and a daughter – a mother who casts off her daughter in order to save her, and a daughter who may never exorcise that abandonment. |
| toni morrison the bluest eye: Playing in the Dark Toni Morrison, 2007-07-24 An immensely persuasive work of literary criticism that opens a new chapter in the American dialogue on race—and promises to change the way we read American literature—from the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner Morrison shows how much the themes of freedom and individualism, manhood and innocence, depended on the existence of a black population that was manifestly unfree--and that came to serve white authors as embodiments of their own fears and desires. According to the Chicago Tribune, Morrison reimagines and remaps the possibility of America. Her brilliant discussions of the Africanist presence in the fiction of Poe, Melville, Cather, and Hemingway leads to a dramatic reappraisal of the essential characteristics of our literary tradition. Written with the artistic vision that has earned the Nobel Prize-winning author a pre-eminent place in modern letters, Playing in the Dark is an invaluable read for avid Morrison admirers as well as students, critics, and scholars of American literature. |
The Bluest Eye: Study Guide - SparkNotes
The Bluest Eye by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, published in 1970, is a profound exploration of race, beauty, and identity in 1940s America.The novel is set in Lorain, Ohio, and follows the heartbreaking story of Pecola Breedlove, a young African American girl who internalizes beauty standards that privilege whiteness.
The Bluest Eye: Full Book Summary - SparkNotes
The flowers refuse to bloom, and Pecola’s baby dies when it is born prematurely. Cholly, who rapes Pecola a second time and then runs away, dies in a workhouse. Pecola goes mad, believing that her cherished wish has been fulfilled and that she has the bluest eyes. A short summary of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.
The Bluest Eye: Character List - SparkNotes
The Bluest Eye characters include: Pecola Breedlove , Claudia MacTeer , Cholly Breedlove , Pauline Breedlove , Sammy Breedlove, Frieda MacTeer, Mrs. MacTeer, Soaphead Church, Maureen Peal, Geraldine, Henry Washington, China, Poland, Miss Marie. ... Toni Morrison and The Bluest Eye Background Suggestions for Further Reading Please wait while we ...
The Bluest Eye: Full Book Analysis - SparkNotes
The Bluest Eye is a complex, twentieth-century narrative exploring, in part, how perceptions of beauty determine an individual's sense of self-worth and capacity for self-love. Morrison, as events unfold in the life of the novel’s protagonist, Pecola Breedlove, demonstrates that social constructs around beauty disempower and corrupt individuals, especially those who live on the …
The Bluest Eye Autumn: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis - SparkNotes
A summary of Autumn: Chapter 1 in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of The Bluest Eye and what it means. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans.
The Bluest Eye: Motifs - SparkNotes
A summary of motifs in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. ... SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription.
The Bluest Eye: Themes - SparkNotes
The novel suggests that, no matter how messy and sometimes violent human desire is, it is also the source of happiness: denial of the body begets hatred and violence, not redemption. Read about the related theme of sexual fulfillment in John Steinbeck’s “The Chrysanthemums.”. A summary of Themes in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.
The Bluest Eye Prologue Summary & Analysis - SparkNotes
A summary of Prologue in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of The Bluest Eye and what it means. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans.
The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison and The Bluest Eye Background
The Bluest Eye contains a number of autobiographical elements. It is set in the town where Morrison grew up, and it is told from the point of view of a nine-year-old, the age Morrison would have been the year the novel takes place (1941). Like the MacTeer family, Morrison’s family struggled to make ends meet during the Great Depression.
The Bluest Eye: Questions & Answers - SparkNotes
The Bluest Eye refers to Pecola’s wish for blue eyes, based on her belief that having blue eyes would make people love her. She comes to this conclusion because of the way society prizes whiteness as the most beautiful, epitomized by blue eyes. For example, Mrs. Breedlove treats the Fisher family’s blue-eyed daughter with love that she ...
The Bluest Eye: Study Guide - SparkNotes
The Bluest Eye by Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison, published in 1970, is a profound exploration of race, beauty, and identity in 1940s America.The novel is set in Lorain, Ohio, and follows the heartbreaking story of Pecola Breedlove, a young African American girl who internalizes beauty standards that privilege whiteness.
The Bluest Eye: Full Book Summary - SparkNotes
The flowers refuse to bloom, and Pecola’s baby dies when it is born prematurely. Cholly, who rapes Pecola a second time and then runs away, dies in a workhouse. Pecola goes mad, believing that her cherished wish has been fulfilled and that she has the bluest eyes. A short summary of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.
The Bluest Eye: Character List - SparkNotes
The Bluest Eye characters include: Pecola Breedlove , Claudia MacTeer , Cholly Breedlove , Pauline Breedlove , Sammy Breedlove, Frieda MacTeer, Mrs. MacTeer, Soaphead Church, Maureen Peal, Geraldine, Henry Washington, China, Poland, Miss Marie. ... Toni Morrison and The Bluest Eye Background Suggestions for Further Reading Please wait while we ...
The Bluest Eye: Full Book Analysis - SparkNotes
The Bluest Eye is a complex, twentieth-century narrative exploring, in part, how perceptions of beauty determine an individual's sense of self-worth and capacity for self-love. Morrison, as events unfold in the life of the novel’s protagonist, Pecola Breedlove, demonstrates that social constructs around beauty disempower and corrupt individuals, especially those who live on the …
The Bluest Eye Autumn: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis - SparkNotes
A summary of Autumn: Chapter 1 in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of The Bluest Eye and what it means. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans.
The Bluest Eye: Motifs - SparkNotes
A summary of motifs in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. ... SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription.
The Bluest Eye: Themes - SparkNotes
The novel suggests that, no matter how messy and sometimes violent human desire is, it is also the source of happiness: denial of the body begets hatred and violence, not redemption. Read about the related theme of sexual fulfillment in John Steinbeck’s “The Chrysanthemums.”. A summary of Themes in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.
The Bluest Eye Prologue Summary & Analysis - SparkNotes
A summary of Prologue in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of The Bluest Eye and what it means. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans.
The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison and The Bluest Eye Background
The Bluest Eye contains a number of autobiographical elements. It is set in the town where Morrison grew up, and it is told from the point of view of a nine-year-old, the age Morrison would have been the year the novel takes place (1941). Like the MacTeer family, Morrison’s family struggled to make ends meet during the Great Depression.
The Bluest Eye: Questions & Answers - SparkNotes
The Bluest Eye refers to Pecola’s wish for blue eyes, based on her belief that having blue eyes would make people love her. She comes to this conclusion because of the way society prizes whiteness as the most beautiful, epitomized by blue eyes. For example, Mrs. Breedlove treats the Fisher family’s blue-eyed daughter with love that she ...
