Items related to The Bluest Eye

Morrison, Toni The Bluest Eye ISBN 13: 9780375411557

The Bluest Eye - Hardcover

 
9780375411557: The Bluest Eye
View all copies of this ISBN edition:
 
 
The Bluest Eye, published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature.

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.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:
Oprah Book Club® Selection, April 2000: Originally published in 1970, The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel. In an afterword written more than two decades later, the author expressed her dissatisfaction with the book's language and structure: "It required a sophistication unavailable to me." Perhaps we can chalk up this verdict to modesty, or to the Nobel laureate's impossibly high standards of quality control. In any case, her debut is nothing if not sophisticated, in terms of both narrative ingenuity and rhetorical sweep. It also shows the young author drawing a bead on the subjects that would dominate much of her career: racial hatred, historical memory, and the dazzling or degrading power of language itself.

Set in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941, The Bluest Eye is something of an ensemble piece. The point of view is passed like a baton from one character to the next, with Morrison's own voice functioning as a kind of gold standard throughout. The focus, though, is on an 11-year-old black girl named Pecola Breedlove, whose entire family has been given a cosmetic cross to bear:

You looked at them and wondered why they were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had each accepted it without question.... And they took the ugliness in their hands, threw it as a mantle over them, and went about the world with it.
There are far uglier things in the world than, well, ugliness, and poor Pecola is subjected to most of them. She's spat upon, ridiculed, and ultimately raped and impregnated by her own father. No wonder she yearns to be the very opposite of what she is--yearns, in other words, to be a white child, possessed of the blondest hair and the bluest eye.

This vein of self-hatred is exactly what keeps Morrison's novel from devolving into a cut-and-dried scenario of victimization. She may in fact pin too much of the blame on the beauty myth: "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." Yet the destructive power of these ideas is essentially colorblind, which gives The Bluest Eye the sort of universal reach that Morrison's imitators can only dream of. And that, combined with the novel's modulated pathos and musical, fine-grained language, makes for not merely a sophisticated debut but a permanent one. --James Marcus

From the Back Cover:
"This story commands attention, for it contains one black girl's universe."
--Newsweek

"Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye is an inquiry into the reasons why beauty gets wasted in this country. The beauty in this case is black. [Miss Morrison's prose is] so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry...I have said 'poetry,' but The Bluest Eye is also history, sociology, folklore, nightmare and music."
--John Leonard, The New York Times

"A fresh, close look at the lives of terror and decorum of those Negroes who want to get on in a white man's world...A touching and disturbing picture of the doomed youth of [the author's] race."
--L.E. Sissman, The New Yorker

"A profoundly successful work of fiction...so controlled, so good...with the same clean precision that Sherwood Anderson used to carve his troubled little town...Taut and understated, harsh in its detachment, sympathetic in its truth...it is an experience."
--Gary Blonston, Detroit Free Press

"The freshest, most precise language I've run across in years...Toni Morrison is a wizard."
--John A. Williams

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

  • PublisherKnopf
  • Publication date1993
  • ISBN 10 0375411550
  • ISBN 13 9780375411557
  • BindingHardcover
  • Number of pages215
  • Rating

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780307278449: The Bluest Eye (Vintage International)

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9780307278449
Publisher: Vintage, 2007
Softcover

  • 9780099759911: BLUEST EYE

    RANDOM..., 2000
    Softcover

  • 9780452273054: The Bluest Eye

    Plume, 1994
    Softcover

  • 9780452287068: The Bluest Eye

    Plume, 2005
    Softcover

  • 9780452282193: The Bluest Eye (Oprah's Book Club)

    Plume, 2000
    Softcover

Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace

Stock Image

Morrison, Toni
Published by Knopf (1993)
ISBN 10: 0375411550 ISBN 13: 9780375411557
New Hardcover Quantity: > 20
Seller:
Lakeside Books
(Benton Harbor, MI, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. Brand New! Not Overstocks or Low Quality Book Club Editions! Direct From the Publisher! We're not a giant, faceless warehouse organization! We're a small town bookstore that loves books and loves it's customers! Buy from Lakeside Books!. Seller Inventory # OTF-S-9780375411557

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 16.85
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 3.99
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Morrison, Toni
Published by Knopf (1993)
ISBN 10: 0375411550 ISBN 13: 9780375411557
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Sharehousegoods
(Colgate, WI, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. This is a brand new book! Fast Shipping - Safe and Secure Mailer - Our goal is to deliver a better item than what you are hoping for! If not we will make it right!. Seller Inventory # 1XG77X001AF5_ns

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 17.00
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 3.99
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Seller Image

Morrison, Toni
Published by Knopf (1993)
ISBN 10: 0375411550 ISBN 13: 9780375411557
New Hardcover Quantity: 10
Seller:
booksXpress
(Bayonne, NJ, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9780375411557

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 21.10
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Seller Image

Morrison, Toni
Published by Alfred A. Knopf 12/28/1993 (1993)
ISBN 10: 0375411550 ISBN 13: 9780375411557
New Hardcover Quantity: 5
Seller:
BargainBookStores
(Grand Rapids, MI, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardback or Cased Book. Condition: New. The Bluest Eye 0.64. Book. Seller Inventory # BBS-9780375411557

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 21.83
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

MORRISON, TONI
Published by Penguin Random House (1993)
ISBN 10: 0375411550 ISBN 13: 9780375411557
New Hardcover Quantity: > 20
Seller:
INDOO
(Avenel, NJ, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. Brand New. Seller Inventory # 0375411550

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 18.13
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 3.99
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Morrison, Toni
Published by Knopf (1993)
ISBN 10: 0375411550 ISBN 13: 9780375411557
New Hardcover Quantity: > 20
Seller:
Save With Sam
(North Miami, FL, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Brand New!. Seller Inventory # 0375411550

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 24.57
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Morrison, Toni
Published by Knopf (1993)
ISBN 10: 0375411550 ISBN 13: 9780375411557
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldenWavesOfBooks
(Fayetteville, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. New. Fast Shipping and good customer service. Seller Inventory # Holz_New_0375411550

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 22.91
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.00
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Seller Image

Toni Morrison
ISBN 10: 0375411550 ISBN 13: 9780375411557
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Grand Eagle Retail
(Wilmington, DE, U.S.A.)

Book Description Hardcover. Condition: new. Hardcover. A reissue of Toni Morrison's first novel, published in 1970. It is the story of a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others; she prays for her eyes to turn blue, so that she will be beautiful, so that her world will be different . Relates the story of Pecola Breedlove, an eleven-year-old Black girl growing up in an America that values blue-eyed blondes, and the tragedy that results from her longing to be accepted. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780375411557

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 27.49
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Morrison, Toni
Published by Knopf (1993)
ISBN 10: 0375411550 ISBN 13: 9780375411557
New Hardcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
GF Books, Inc.
(Hawthorne, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. Book is in NEW condition. Seller Inventory # 0375411550-2-1

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 28.00
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Morrison, Toni
Published by Knopf (1993)
ISBN 10: 0375411550 ISBN 13: 9780375411557
New Hardcover Quantity: > 20
Seller:
California Books
(Miami, FL, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # I-9780375411557

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 28.00
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds

There are more copies of this book

View all search results for this book