The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

READERS SIDENOTE: I feel at times compelled to read a book because of its hype, or it won an award, or it has a snazzy cover; in this case, The Bluest Eye was not only a National Bestseller, it was a winner of The Nobel Prize in Literature - that's a big deal. Unfortunately, this, like many that have caught my eye because of extraneous reasons rather than my gut based on "the back flap," fell flat. This flatness was not because of poor writing or bad subject matter; it was because of the same reason that prompted me to pick it up: the hype, and my, in turn, expectation.

The Bluest Eye is a story of true color; Pecola Breedlove's ebony skin and her desire for blue eyes - to make her beautiful. In the afterward, Ms. Morrison pens that she doesn't want the reader to pity Pecola, but it's hard not to. As a mother, as a person who always found fault in her appearance, I read the book with a mixture of sadness, empathy, pity, and guilt (my eyes are not blue, but my skin is white).

The book was not to derive my guilt but to enlighten me, I'm sure, which it did - I felt deeply for Pecola's dream to be what she could never; in her case, a girl with blue eyes. Ms. Morrison does an exceptional job at causing the reader to see their innocuous fortune through the eyes of those who are told they are not as blessed.

I got lost a couple of times as the book wandered down a path to call out an example or point and then felt jolted back when the scene would shift, and I again understood where I was and with whom I was interacting as the reader. I guess this inability to follow would be my issue, as who am I to discredit or downplay the scholars voting on the highest acclaim in literature.

Would I recommend the Bluest Eye? Yes. I think we all need to be stretched, academically and socially.