Toni Morrison Accomplishments

Toni Morrison, the author of The Bluest Eye, centers her novel around two things: beauty and wealth in their relation to race and a brutal rape of a young girl by her father. Morrison explores and exposes these themes in relation to the underlying factors of black society: racism and sexism. Every character has a problem to deal with and it involves racism and/or sexism. Whether the characters are the victim or the aggressor, they can do nothing about their problem or condition, especially when concerning gender and race. Morrison's characters are clearly at the mercy of preconceived notions maintained by society. Because of these preconceived notions, the racism found in The Bluest Eye is not whites against blacks. Morrison writes about

Toni Morrison is one of the most talented and successful African-American authors of our time. Famous for works such as The Bluest Eye, Sula, and Beloved, Morrison has cultivated large audiences of all ethnicities and social classes with her creative style of writing. It is not Morrison’s talent of creating new stories that attracts her fans. In contrast, it is her talent of revising and modernizing traditional Biblical and mythological stories that have been present in literature for centuries. Morrison replaces the characters in these myths, whom would have been white, middle-class males, with characters who depict the cultural practices in black communities. The protagonists in Morrison’s works are primarily African-American women

Throughout Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye, she captures, with vivid insight, the plight of a young African American girl and what she would be subjected to in a media contrived society that places its ideal of beauty on the e quintessential blue-eyed, blonde woman. The idea of what is beautiful has been stereotyped in the mass media since the beginning and creates a mental and emotional damage to self and soul. This oppression to the soul creates a socio-economic displacement causing a cycle of dysfunction and abuses. Morrison takes us through the agonizing story of just such a young girl, Pecola Breedlove, and her aching desire to have what is considered beautiful - blue eyes. Racial stereotypes of beauty contrived and nourished by

“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, is a story about the life of a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who is growing up during post World War I. She prays for the bluest eyes, which will “make her beautiful” and in turn make her accepted by her family and peers. The major issue in the book, the idea of ugliness, was the belief that “blackness” was not valuable or beautiful. This view, handed down to them at birth, was a cultural hindrance to the black race.

The Bluest Eye is her first book which talks about a victimized adolescent Black girl who is obsessed by the White standards of beauty. In this novel, Morrison deals with Black women’s experience in America, their struggle for finding their personal as well as their cultural identities.

Toni Morrison is qualified to write The Bluest Eye because it contains a number of factual 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. Like the MacTeer family, Morrison’s family fought to make ends meet during the Great Depression. Morrison grew up listening to her mother singing and her grandfather playing the violin, just as Claudia does. In the novel’s afterword, Morrison explains that the story developed out of a conversation she had had in elementary school with a little girl, who longed for blue eyes. She was still thinking about this conversation in the 1960s, when the Black is Beautiful movement

Although she is widely known as a beloved author and the only living Nobel Prize for Literature recipient (Tally 3538), author Toni Morrison’s sole published story is a work by the title of “Recitatif,” the French word for an event in music that varies between song and speech, seen during operas and other oratory work. The title is a nod towards the story, which tells us about the experience of two originally young girls named Roberta and Twyla that meet in an orphanage in the mid twentieth century and their off and on meetings. It is not until towards the end of the story that the reader begins to discover what the story is truly about, not only political views, but also other topics such as civil rights, race, disability, and ethnicity as poignant topics of that time period. Morrison’s “Recitatif” not only serves as an example of a significant work within American literature, but an example of the author’s social views and political beliefs throughout the contemporary

Who is Toni Morrison? Toni Morrison, or should I say Chloe Anthony Wofford, was born in Lorain, Ohio, in February 18, 1931. Toni was the first African American woman who was awarded the Nobel Prize and the Pulitzer Prize for her amazing novels. She is an inspirational African American literary writer who uses powerful and intense themes to detail black characters. She is an important literary African American writer who touched many people. “The Bluest Eyes”, “Song of Solomon”, and “Beloved” are one of the best known novels she has written. Like every African American family, they went through racial issues. She had developed an interest in literature and then graduated from High School with honors. After high school she went off to attend Howard College to pursue her interest in literature. Finally she got her

Morrison writes in the forward of The Bluest Eye that “many readers remain touched but not moved” by her work. Some readers may be touched in a way that causes them to sympathize with the black character’s experiences; other readers may be touched in a way that causes them to be repulsed by the depiction of explicit content like Laura Murphy’s son. Regardless of how the text resonated with the readers, by teaching students Toni Morrison’s novels, they will be inspired to form their own movement to approach the issues at hand. School provides students the opportunity to unveil issues like Morrison does in her works. Because of the diverse setting within schools, each student has their own perspective and experience that allows them to internalize

Unlike other books on the subject of racism that were published at the time of Toni Morrison, Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” is exceptional because of the manner in which it addresses the persistent effects of slavery, mainly self-hatred, instead of the most apparent problems of isolation. In this book, black characters are infatuated with the idea of what white represents. Being that this book highlights the problems of racism and segregation, the author employs a number of symbols to illustrate his point. One of these symbols used by Toni Morrison is the blue eyes. In the book, the characters are obsessed about the blue eyes and what it represents to each of them.

Beloved by Toni Morrison is comprised of material unrivaled in depth and potency when juxtaposed with the other books that we have covered in this class. This being said, Morrison has something in common with many of the authors that we have covered previously. Morrison can be seen as a seamless conglomeration, and at times moderation, of the texts that we covered previously. She is able to combine many of their trademarks into one finely crafted piece that, whether or not it surmounts, rivals the work of the most historic authors that we have covered.

I am interested in the Toni Morrison project for two reasons. First, I am genuinely excited by the goal of the project: to show how literature and literary language can elucidate issues of class, gender, race, and violence. In addition, I am a junior student seeking to increase my research skills. I hope that helping a faculty member with their research will increase my interest in research as well as aid in making decisions about my future education and career. As a student of an all women’s college, I feel truly humbled, honored, and blessed because I am learning and discovering everyday what it might mean to be a woman in today’s society. I am highly passionate about my education and making a difference more than anything else. After obtaining

Most of literature written by American minority authors is pedagogic, not toward the dominant culture, but for the minority cultures of which they are members. These authors realize that the dominant culture has misrepresented minority history, and it is the minority writers' burden to undertake the challenge of setting the record straight to strengthen and heal their own cultures. Unfortunately, many minorities are ambivalent because they vacillate between assimilation (thereby losing their separateness and cultural uniqueness) and segregation from the dominant culture. To decide whether to assimilate, it is essential for minorities to understand themselves as individuals and as a race. Mainstream United States history has dealt with the

The Bluest Eye(1970) is Morrison’s first novel and also a very powerful study of how African-American families and particularly women are affected by racism and consequent sexual and mental abuse and how these women dwindle into madness. She depicts the struggle of living as a black American in a white, patriarchal society. This work is powerfully engaged with questions of history, memory and trauma. Her novels function as a form of cultural memory and how, in their engagement with African American past, they testify to historical trauma. In a 1989 interview with Bonnie Angelo, Morrison talks about racism as it is taught, institutionalized and culturally reproduced. “Everybody remembers the first time they were taught that part of the human race was Other. That’s a trauma. It’s as though I told you that your left hand is not part of your body.”

The Bluest Eye, Toni, Morrison’s First Novel is considered as one of the prominent greatest literary works that dominates the genre of Afro- American literature.