It pains me to say I hadn’t read any of Toni Morrison’s work before this point. Now, I feel irrevocably changed thanks to The Bluest Eye, the first novel of hers but by no means a little one. The Bluest Eye is raw, blunt, and makes known from the first page that no ordinary upbringing exists when you are a Black girl. The more I read the more the words found a place of understanding, and who could forget that introduction and foreword.

The Bluest Eye is a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author’s girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedloves’ garden do not bloom. Pecola’s life does change—in painful, devastating ways. With its vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child’s yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfilment, The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison’s most powerful, unforgettable novels, and a significant work of American fiction.

Candice Carty-Williams sets the scene perfectly in her 2022 introduction, stating: “Black girlhood is hopelessly fragile, but so rarely understood or accepted as such.” Black girls are forced to grow up too quickly, to grow thicker skin to counter the abuse that is thrown at them, and at no point is a girl allowed to simply be a child. The Bluest Eye is a story where mistruths poison the life of a little girl and make it so she never sees herself as beautiful, never lets her features and her being be appreciated as beautiful alongside the likes of other kids. Morrison furthers this sentiment in her foreword, addressing the motivation for the story. When contempt and rejection are understood to be self-evident and fact it creates invisible scars in a young girls mind, and growing up in a world without a support system to mitigate and fight these thoughts means there is little hope for the truth to prevail. Thankfully, we now live in an age where cultures and signs of beauty are varied and appreciated. We also live in a time where access to social media, and therefore the billions of users on it, makes it so young Black girls can find role models who prove that Black is beautiful.

But back to The Bluest Eye. The characters is this book are all sorts of complex, with different influences and antagonists contributing to the overall themes and pressures of the world. You can’t help but want to dislike or even hate some characters, but the reality is that children growing up in a world dominated by eurocentric beauty and ideals will harbour sentiments of ill-will, inherent racism, and, in Pecola’s case, deep self-hatred and resentment. It is a powerful novel in this sense, and Toni Morrison has done a masterful job at building this environment.

Toni Morrison’s work dominates the field when it comes to Black experiences and the themes of poverty, race identity, and internalised racism. Not only is she an icon of Black literature, but an author of incredible talent, poise, and purpose. Black History Month isn’t the only time her work should be recommended or read, and I implore everyone to go through her books and read some truly exquisite and painful prose. The experiences and narratives shared are raw and can feel like direct confrontation to the world you know, but it is entirely worth while.