The Bluest Eye
Pecola Breedlove is an eleven-year-old Black girl in Lorain, Ohio, in 1941 who prays every night to wake up with blue eyes because she has been told, without ever being told directly, that the world's affection will find her only if she looks the way white children look. Around her, Toni Morrison builds a working-class Black community that is itself negotiating an ambient belief about worth, her best friends Claudia and Frieda who narrate sections of the book, her broken mother Pauline, her devastated father Cholly, the neighborhood prostitutes, and a pedophile boarder. Morrison's 1970 debut, her first and in some readings her most personal novel, is a compressed, lyrical case study in the way internalized racism operates in a single small life.
Where The Bluest Eye keeps showing up
Five of our editors' lists feature this novel.
Also by Toni Morrison
Books in conversation with The Bluest Eye
A few of the closest reads from our full list.
What you might want to know about The Bluest Eye
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove, a poor Black girl in 1941 Lorain, Ohio, believes that if she had blue eyes the world would treat her differently. The novel weaves the year of her descent through several local voices.
Yes. The Bluest Eye (1970) was Toni Morrison's debut novel. She won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Morrison began her career as a Random House editor before publishing her first novel at age 39.
Yes. The Bluest Eye has been one of the most frequently banned and challenged books in American schools, primarily for its depictions of sexual abuse and racism. It remains widely taught despite the challenges.
The Bluest Eye was written by Toni Morrison, published in 1970 by Vintage International.
The Bluest Eye is 176 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Bluest Eye takes most readers 3 to 4 hours to finish.
The Bluest Eye is a standalone novel by Toni Morrison, not part of a series.
The Bluest Eye is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
