Skip to content

The Bluest Eye
Stock Photo: Cover May Be Different

The Bluest Eye Unknown -

by Toni Morrison (Narrator) Toni Morrison (Author)


About this book

The Bluest Eye is a 1970 novel by American author Toni Morrison. It is Morrison's first novel, written while Morrison was teaching at Howard University and was raising her two sons on her own. The story is about a year in the life of a young black girl in Lorain, Ohio named Pecola Breedlove. It takes place against the backdrop of America's Midwest as well as in the years following the Great Depression. 

Brutal in its depictions of racism, incest, and child molestation, The Bluest Eye has remained on the often-challenged and banned books list almost every year since its publication.

From the publisher

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.

First Edition Identification

Quite scarce! Morrison's first novel was published by Holt Rinehart Winston in New York, 1970. The first edition is stated on the copyright page, and the jacket is priced at $5.95.

Details

  • Title The Bluest Eye
  • Author Toni Morrison (Narrator) Toni Morrison (Author)
  • Binding unknown
  • Publisher Books On Tape
  • ISBN 9780307941138

About the author

Toni Morrison is the author also of Sula, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved (awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988), and Jazz.