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This audacious exploration into the nature of love is rich in characters, striking scenes and a profound understanding of how alive the past can be.
May, Christine, Heed, Junior, Vida–even L: all women obsessed with Bill Cosey. The wealthy owner of the famous Cosey’s Hotel and Resort, he shapes their yearnings for father, husband, lover, guardian, and friend, yearnings that dominate the lives of these women long after his death. Yet while he is either the void in, or the center of, their stories, he himself is driven by secret forces–a troubled past and a spellbinding woman named Celestial.
This audacious exploration into the nature of love–its appetite, its sublime possession, its dread–is rich in characters, striking scenes, and a profound understanding of how alive the past can be.
The day she walked the streets of Silk, a chafing wind kept the temperature low and the sun was helpless to move outdoor thermometers more than a few degrees above freezing. Tiles of ice had formed at the shoreline and, inland, the thrown-together houses on Monarch Street whined like puppies. Ice slick gleamed, then disappeared in the early evening shadow, causing the sidewalks she marched along to undermine even an agile tread, let alone one with a faint limp. She should have bent her head and closed her eyes to slits in that weather, but being a stranger, she stared wide-eyed at each house, searching for the address that matched the one in the advertisement: One Monarch Street. Finally she turned into a driveway where Sandler Gibbons stood in his garage door ripping the seam from a sack of Ice-Off. He remembers the crack of her heels on concrete as she approached; the angle of her hip as she stood there, the melon sun behind her, the garage light in her face. He remembers the ...
BookBrowsers ask Princess Joy L. Perry, author of This Here Is Love
Thank you for inviting me to have a conversation with your readers. It's hard to decide what to say about myself, so I will start with some bookish things. If I were stranded on an island, the books I would want with me are Sula by Toni Morrison, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Marquez, The Song...
-Princess_P
Claudia feels her and Frieda’s sorrow for Pecola’s predicament “was the more intense because nobody else seemed to share it.” Why do you think others in the town were less than sympathetic to her to Pecola's situation? Why did no one offer to help?
It did make an impression on me, but I was a pretty resilient kid. I knew that my parents loved my sister and me, gave us a good and safe home, only wanted the best for us, and that was enough. Obviously, it did change that 13 year old girl's life and I've always wondered what happened to her. I ...
-Lana_Maskus
The narrator states that romantic love and physical beauty are "probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought." What did you think of this statement?
I agree that our society's embrace of the superiority of individuals with certain physical characteristics is destructive. It makes those individuals who don't meet the physical beauty standards set by society believe that they are inferior. Those that are seen to be physically beautiful have the...
-Lana_Maskus
Overall, what did you think of The Bluest Eye? (no spoilers, please!)
This is probably the most heartbreaking, hopeless book I have read in my 72 years. It is such a visceral book on race, class, gender, neglect, and emotional and sexual abuse. Many readers commented on the perception of ugly vs beauty in the context of white vs black. That is definitely an aspect ...
-Lana_Maskus
Is the conversation at the end of the book a real conversation?
I took it to be that Percola is hearing a voice and speaking to that voice. Breaks my heart. She never had anyone who loved or cared for her so in her mental illness, which I feel is a direct result of her isolation, invents the voice/friend in her mind.
-Lana_Maskus
Frieda loves her dolls while Claudia preferred to dismantle them. Did you play with dolls as a child, or were you more of the “dismantling” type?
I played with dolls as a child, but wasn't obsessed with them by any means. It was just something to do. I didn't have a favorite doll or stuffed animal that I clung to. In remembering myself and watching my daughter and granddaughters, I think most children are somewhat destructive at a young ag...
-Lana_Maskus
The title of the novel refers to Pecola's intense desire for blue eyes. How do you feel racial self-loathing corrodes the lives of Pecola and her parents? How does this manifest itself in characters like Maureen Peal, Geraldine, and Soaphead Church?
Morrison calling the family Breedlove seemed to set the tone for the entire novel. Neither Cholly or Pauline or their parents before them could be seen as breeding love. Geraldine's self-loathing stands out because it directly affects her treatment of others. She meets the physical needs of her b...
-Linda_O_donnell
The novel opens with an excerpt from an old-fashioned reading primer. The lines begin to blur and run together -- as they do at the beginning of select chapters. What do you think Morrison is trying to say or achieve by starting her book this way?
I love everyone's thoughts so far - especially regarding how "keeping up with the Joneses" expectations were harmful and discriminatory. Without being able to peek behind the curtain of a perfect family, one wouldn't know it's often a facade. Despite having all the elements of the American Dream,...
-Shannon_L
The author clearly condemns Cholly's actions but resists dehumanizing him. If rape of one's daughter is an "unimaginable" crime, can one at least trace the events (and resulting emotions) that made it possible for Cholly to commit this brutal act?
Just as in today's societies where we have men in authority who do not show empathy, love nor compassion because of a lack of it during their own childhood. They have no ability to relate to the masses of people who were nurtured as children in healthy ways. So to, the portrayal of Cholly is an e...
-Karen_M
How did you see beauty standards impacting the different girls in the novel? How are things different today, and how are things the same?
Pecola is constantly told that she is ugly, which leads her to believe she is unworthy of love, safety and happiness. Claudia dismembers her white dolls symbolizing her rejection that only white features are beautiful. Frieda shares Claudia's frustration but is more passive about it. Maureen, who...
-Karen_M
What advantages do you see in telling Pecola's story from a child's point of view? How would the story’s impact be different if narrated by an adult?
With Claudia telling Pecola's story about th rape, showed nuisances and empathy towards Pecola. Despite people talking negatively about the pregnancy, Claudia and her sister wanted the Black baby to live, just like white babies. They marigolds was their hope that the baby would live, but neither ...
-Tonyia_R
Is there a quote or scene in The Bluest Eye that stood out for you? Why do you suppose it resonated?
Morrison writes that only musicians could make sense of Cholly's life. "Only they would know how to connect the heart of a red watermelon to the asafetida bag to the muscadine to the flashlight on his behind to the fists of money to the lemonade in a Mason jar to a man called Blue and come up wit...
-Linda_O_donnell
Pecola approaches Soaphead about obtaining blue eyes. Why do you think the author included this story? How would it have been different, in your opinion, if it had been relayed from Pecola’s point of view rather than Soaphead’s?
I just re-read this part and I'm still confused. Soaphead was a fraud, but he wanted to grant her wish for blue eyes. She believed her eyes turned blue and that was going to give her the life for which she yearned. When she talked to her friend, she kept asking if hers were "the bluest eyes". Alt...
-Sylvia_L
Did learning about Cholly’s and Pauline’s pasts help you develop any sympathy for either of them?
I would not say I felt sympathetic, but understood their inability to be good parents. They lack good role models. They were trying to survive the best they knew how. They live in a two worlds; a dichotomy that whites do not have to experience; the white world where they employed and black commun...
-Tonyia_R
What book(s) are you excited to read in 2025?
I'm looking forward to reading The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison Medgar & Myrlie by Joy-Ann Reid Home and Away by Rocelle Alers The Women by Kristen Hannah Sky Full of Elephants by Cebo Campbell Lovely One by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson These reads should take me to Spring!
-Joyce_Montague
Catherine Bush
There’s no escaping love in Toni Morrison’s novels: it’s a difficult, complicated, ferocious force that runs like a deep and turbulent river through all her fiction, sometimes transporting and sometimes destroying people. It’s no wonder her own characters cry out against it.
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