The Bluest Eye

By Toni Morrison and Jacqueline Woodson

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner—a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtlety and grace. • With a new introduction by Jacqueline Woodson.

“So precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry”—The New York Times

In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 24, 2007
• ISBN: 9780307386588

Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison (1931-2019) nació en Lorain (Ohio). Alternó su trabajo de profesora de Humanidades en la Universidad de Princeton con la actividad literaria. En sus obras planteó la problemática de la población negra en Estados Unidos, en especial la situación de las mujeres. Fue autora de las novelas Ojos azules (1970), Sula (1973), La canción de Salomón (1977, National Book Critics Circle Award en 1978), La isla de los caballeros (1981), Beloved (Lumen, 2021, Premio Pulitzer), Jazz (1992), Paraíso (1997), Amor (2003), Una bendición (Lumen, 2009), Volver (Lumen, 2012) y La noche de los niños (Lumen, 2016), de ensayos como El origen de los otros (Lumen, 2018) y La fuente de la autoestima (Lumen, 2020), y de un único relato que, con epílogo de Zadie Smith, Lumen publica ahora en el libro Las dos amigas (un recitativo). En 1993 obtuvo el Premio Nobel de Literatura. Murió en agosto de 2019 en el pequeño pueblo neoyorquino de Grand View-on-Hudson a los ochenta y ocho años de edad.

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Introduction to the Vintage Books Edition (2025)

The year I was ten years old, I went in search of my Black literary life. I didn’t know that was what I was looking for but knew there was a missing in my world. And I knew this absence had to do with books, my own dream of writing them one day, my neighborhood, my family, and all that I knew myself to be at that age. The dialogue of strangers lived freely in my imagination—the words of half-formed characters I did not yet understand but knew I had not met in the pages of fiction. I knew the something I was looking for had to do with all this and with years spent searching through the books of my childhood for any kind of Black girl I could find.

The writer and scholar Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop spoke of the importance of young people having both mirrors and windows in their literature. Mirrors so that they can see reflections of themselves in the books they read. Windows so that they can see outside their own lives and into the experiences of others. At ten, nearly two decades before Dr. Bishop wrote of mirrors and windows, I was searching through the books in both my school and my public library for some part of myself in the bigger world.

I was living in Brooklyn, a child of the Great Migration, replanted and unsteady in this new world. I was lanky and ashy-kneed, a tomboy standing in the shadow of a beautiful and brilliant older sister. My memory of that time is one of melancholy and solitude even as I also remember days spent running the streets with my friends and living in a small, crowded apartment with my parents and three siblings.

As a writer, I know now that years erase the clarity of physical memory, leaving behind only the sepia-toned edges of the emotions once felt. In this place, from that clear-eyed, seemingly evergreen emotion, a novel, especially this novel, begins.

The Bluest Eye is sepia.

And it is evergreen.

Decades after reading this book, the characters continue to haunt me, as does the sense of deep love and devastating loss, hope destroyed and rebuilt, community recognized and embraced—all from the perspective of a melancholy Black girl. When finally found, The Bluest Eye was everything I needed to begin my own journey toward story.

By then the dream of one day being a writer had become a shaky one—I was a slow reader. I was not wealthy. I was not white. And contrary to what my relatives said about me, I didn’t believe I was even pretty, let alone beautiful. Reflected inside the books I had been exposed to thus far were people who did not look or live as I did.

But the ancestors had other plans for me.

One afternoon, as I sat down in front of the shelves of books lining the back wall of my fifth-grade classroom at P.S. 106 in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn (a then–working class neighborhood of Black, Latino, Polish, and German people), I found, snuggled in among the multiple copies of Harriet the Spy, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, a thin paperback. On the cover, a Black woman—her pastel-ribboned hair looking like someone’s cheap wig—held a blond-haired doll. Below the image, in thick black letters, was the book’s title: The Bluest Eye. It was an awful cover, and yet I was fascinated! I must have reached up and touched the satin ribbons in my own hair. Ribbons I would be forced to wear for another three years. And, child of the 1970s that I was, aside from the occasional Black Barbie and Chrissy dolls that showed up at our home, most of my dolls were pale-skinned and blue-eyed. Even if I was not fooled by the woman masquerading as a girl on the cover, something about all of it—the ribbons, the doll, the title—let me know I had found home. Let me know I had found my mirror and my window. I was on my way.

Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door….

In the opening lines of The Bluest Eye, I was brought into a world that was at once new and familiar. What child of the seventies hadn’t grown up with the stories of Dick and Jane? And later, I would wonder, what teacher, having read only the first line of The Bluest Eye, had accidentally added it to the paltry collection of middlegrade fiction with the hopes of expanding the genre for the Black and brown young people in her classroom? Thus, I would learn later, that my Black literary life had started as a grown-up’s mistake, a mistake I continue to believe was a gift from the ancestors. Because when The Bluest Eye begins in earnest with "Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father’s baby that the marigolds did not grow," some part of me doubted I was still in the world of young people’s literature.

And yet…

It was here that I met some of the first Black characters I would come to know in books. It was here that Toni Morrison, through the lives of Claudia, Frieda, and Pecola—three Black girls who were close to me in age— showed me that there was a world out there where stories like the ones I dreamed of telling one day could live on the shelves with other beloved writers and, by extension, out in the bigger world.

Here, inside Morrison’s story of family, Black girlhood, and hope, there is the deeper overarching question about love: Who gets to have it in this country, and who does not? And what is the impact of that unloved-ness not just on its victims but on their families and communities? Frieda and Claudia grow up inside a loving household and, with this as their anchor as they begin to understand the impact of racism and its false narrative of beauty being equated to whiteness, can continue to love themselves and others. Pecola Breedlove comes of age inside the Breedlove family, where, contrary to their names, there is no love. And because of this, the Breedloves have turned that false narrative inward, blaming themselves for their ugliness and acting accordingly.

"How do you do that? Pecola asks Claudia and Frieda. I mean, how do you get somebody to love you?"

From this broken place of being unloved and unknowing, Pecola comes to believe that having blue eyes will make her as beloved as the blond-haired, light-eyed Shirley Temple, a popular child star of the time. Thus begins Pecola’s devastation— a slow and thorough devastation—moving from the inside out.

As a child reading The Bluest Eye, I was left with the memory of a happily ever after—Pecola Breedlove got her blue eyes and went off into the world having finally found her joy.

Years later, as a novelist, I would learn that as long as there is hope in a story, the happiness doesn’t have to come at the end. By then I would have visited The Bluest Eye many times, believing long into my late teens that there had been two versions of the novel: one written for young people, in which the characters got what they wanted, and one written for adults, in which too often, they did not.

Even more years would pass before I’d revisit The Bluest Eye, yet again, to see that this was a book for all ages—that if a reader is hungry enough, they will find what they need in a narrative when they need it. The rest they will misremember. Or not remember at all. And I would see, too, that in the hands of one of the most brilliant storytellers who ever lived, the ending I remembered from my childhood and the ending that makes sense to me now are one and the same. In both, Pecola does get her wish. Tragically. Not magically. In the end, though, she can look in the mirror and see her blue eyes. She can walk through town and no longer feel the lovelessness of the world. In the end, Pecola Breedlove is free.

This is what memory does. The truth remains in the heart of the one who is doing the remembering. For me, there will always be both Pecolas: The broken ghost of a girl who dared to ask for a thing and, through the evil of a hateful world and a broken man, get destroyed by the longing. And Pecola, the marigold who did survive in the fall of 1941. In my heart there will always be that Pecola, too. The one who holds up a mirror to all of us who have only love for her. Then slowly turns that mirror toward herself. And sees, finally, her own undeniable beauty.

Jacqueline Woodson

2025

The Bluest Eye

Here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family. Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane live in the green-and-white house. They are very happy. See Jane. She has a red dress. She wants to play. Who will play with Jane? See the cat. It goes meow-meow. Come and play. Come play with Jane. The kitten will not play. See Mother. Mother is very nice. Mother, will you play with Jane? Mother laughs. Laugh, Mother, laugh. See Father. He is big and strong. Father, will you play with Jane? Father is smiling. Smile, Father, smile. See the dog. Bowwow goes the dog. Do you want to play with Jane? See the dog run. Run, dog, run. Look, look. Here comes a friend. The friend will play with Jane. They will play a good game. Play, Jane, play.

Here is the house it is green and white it has a red door it is very pretty here is the family mother father dick and jane live in the green-and-white house they are very happy see jane she has a red dress she wants to play who will play with jane see the cat it goes meow-meow come and play come play with jane the kitten will not play see mother mother is very nice mother will you play with jane mother laughs laugh mother laugh see father he is big and strong father will you play with jane father is smiling smile father smile see the dog bowwow goes the dog do you want to play do you want to play with jane see the dog run run dog run look look here comes a friend the friend will play with jane they will play a good game play jane play

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Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941. We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father’s baby that the marigolds did not grow. A little examination and much less melancholy would have proved to us that our seeds were not the only ones that did not sprout; nobody’s did. Not even the gardens fronting the lake showed marigolds that year. But so deeply concerned were we with the health and safe delivery of Pecola’s baby we could think of nothing but our own magic: if we planted the seeds, and said the right words over them, they would blossom, and everything would be all right.

It was a long time before my sister and I admitted to ourselves that no green was going to spring from our seeds. Once we knew, our guilt was relieved only by fights and mutual accusations about who was to blame. For years I thought my sister was right: it was my fault. I had planted them too far down in the earth. It never occurred to either of us that the earth itself might have been unyielding. We had dropped our seeds in our own little plot of black dirt just as Pecola’s father had dropped his seeds in his own plot of black dirt. Our innocence and faith were no more productive than his lust or despair. What is clear now is that of all of that hope, fear, lust, love, and grief, nothing remains but Pecola and the unyielding earth. Cholly Breedlove is dead; our innocence too. The seeds shriveled and died; her baby too.

There is really nothing more to say—except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

Autumn

Nuns go by as quiet as lust, and drunken men and sober eyes sing in the lobby of the Greek hotel. Rosemary Villanucci, our next-door friend who lives above her father’s café, sits in a 1939 Buick eating bread and butter. She rolls down the window to tell my sister Frieda and me that we can’t come in. We stare at her, wanting her bread, but more than that wanting to poke the arrogance out of her eyes and smash the pride of ownership that curls her chewing mouth. When she comes out of the car we will beat her up, make red marks on her white skin, and she will cry and ask us do we want her to pull her pants down. We will say no. We don’t know what we should feel or do if she does, but whenever she asks us, we know she is offering us something precious and that our own pride must be asserted by refusing to accept.

School has started, and Frieda and I get new brown stockings and cod-liver oil. Grown-ups talk in tired, edgy voices about Zick’s Coal Company and take us along in the evening to the railroad tracks where we fill burlap sacks with the tiny pieces of coal lying about. Later we walk home, glancing back to see the great carloads of slag being dumped, red hot and smoking, into the ravine that skirts the steel mill. The dying fire lights the sky with a dull orange glow. Frieda and I lag behind, staring at the patch of color surrounded by black. It is impossible not to feel a shiver when our feet leave the gravel path and sink into the dead grass in the field.

Our house is old, cold, and green. At night a kerosene lamp lights one large room. The others are braced in darkness, peopled by roaches and mice. Adults do not talk to us—they give us directions. They issue orders without providing information. When we trip and fall down they glance at us; if we cut or bruise ourselves, they ask us are we crazy. When we catch colds, they shake their heads in disgust at our lack of consideration. How, they ask us, do you expect anybody to get anything done if you all are sick? We cannot answer them. Our illness is treated with contempt, foul Black Draught, and castor oil that blunts our minds.

When, on a day after a trip to collect coal, I cough once, loudly, through bronchial tubes already packed tight with phlegm, my mother frowns. Great Jesus. Get on in that bed. How many times do I have to tell you to wear something on your head? You must be the biggest fool in this town. Frieda? Get some rags and stuff that window.

Frieda restuffs the window. I trudge off to bed, full of guilt and self-pity. I lie down in my underwear, the metal in my black garters hurts my legs, but I do not take them off, for it is too cold to lie stockingless. It takes a long time for my body to heat its place in the bed. Once I have generated a silhouette of warmth, I dare not move, for there is a cold place one-half inch in any direction. No one speaks to me or asks how I feel. In an hour or two my mother comes. Her hands are large and rough, and when she rubs the Vicks salve on my chest, I am rigid with pain. She takes two fingers’ full of it at a time, and massages my chest until I am faint. Just when I think I will tip over into a scream, she scoops out a little of the salve on her forefinger and puts it in my mouth, telling me to swallow. A hot flannel is wrapped about my neck and chest. I am covered up with heavy quilts and ordered to sweat,

Reviews for The Bluest Eye

[Silviarudias · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A powerful writer in a short but intense novel. Notable for creating atmospheres. It has the additional feature that in different chapters, the perspective of the narrator changes. A pleasure. (Translated from Spanish)

[paula1970 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Toni Morrison always makes us look at that reality we dislike facing, and she does it in a way that you never know what you're getting into until you're already inside and have no choice but to look and accept that the world is not that ideal place we paint for ourselves. And the theme here is child abuse. God, right now in my country, where there are several cases in the national controversy, this book arrives with stories of such vulnerable children that it makes you want to lock them up until they grow up and can defend themselves. (List 2021: March Reading Women) (Translated from Spanish)

[Saramp96 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A reading that, despite its brevity, has much to tell on its pages. The main character, Bride/Lula Ann, has made it easy for me to empathize with her, and rightly so; a significant part of her life is very hard and sad, especially all the events that happen during her childhood that will accompany and impact her adulthood.

In addition to Bride, other relevant characters appear, such as the protagonist's mother, her ex, and a childhood teacher, all of whom somehow influence Bride's life, with a quite interesting gray scale in their lives that ultimately adds depth to the entire plot. (Translated from Spanish)

[Guillermo VII · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Tremendous storyteller. Toni Morrison does not disappoint. Communicates a lot with very few words. A very powerful story of personal search that reflects that of the African American community in the U.S. Very good book. (Translated from Spanish)

[SophieLiber · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A very harsh novel that tells how both psychological and physical abuse towards minors generates trauma in their development as individuals and in their loved ones, and how it destroys their future relationships. Through the story of the protagonist, other characters with different and tough stories will be known, who help her in some way. (Translated from Spanish)