We’ve all harbored at least one impossible dream. Mine was to perform magic like Samantha from Bewitched. I’ve got a few others, too. But, based on how my prayers about twitching my nose got answered, I don’t hold out a lot of hope for the rest of my list.
In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, a black girl in an Ohio town wishes for blue eyes.
We shouldn’t be surprised that she wants them, not when the adults in her life give her a blonde-haired, blue-eyed baby doll. And not when Mama works for the people who live in a lakefront house on the lakefront, where she loves on the little blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl that lives there.
Morrison’s body of work “expose
It’s got gossiping mothers. It’s got children listening to gossiping mothers, trying to figure out what it all means. Being put “out of doors”? Mr. So-and-So isn’t married because “somebody cut it off”?
It’s got light-skinned blacks looking down on blacker blacks. “Being a minority . . . We moved about anyway on the hem of life, struggling to consolidate our weaknesses and hang on, or to creep singly up into the major folds of the garment.”
I don’t think I’m giving away too much when I tell you that the story includes a girl pregnant by her father. I liked the chapters wherein the girl tries to make sense of her situation. I like the chapters where the author traces backward, portraying her parents from their roots on up.
Less pleasant are the chapters about erring men, justifying what they do. (One of these fellows doesn’t even belong in the story.)
Barring the explicit passages and some attempts at artistic vagueness, I recommend The Bluest Eye.
==========================================
Care to know what happened to some of last week’s tasty grilled chicken? It ended up in this BLT Chicken Salad.
It’s not every day I have marinated chicken on hand when a recipe calls for “cooked chicken.” (Usually I throw in boiled meat.) I feel terribly pampered.
Leave A Comment