Writing Techniques Used in The Bluest Eye

Toni Morrison the first black woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, was born Chloe Anthony Wofford on February 18, 1931 in Lorain, Ohio. She was the second of four children to George and Ramah Wofford. Her parents moved to Ohio from the South to escape racism and to find better opportunities in the North.

Lorain was a small industrial town populated with immigrant Europeans, Mexicans and Southern blacks who lived next door to each other. Chloe attended an integrated school. In the first grade she was the only black student in her class and the only one who could read.

Chloe attended the prestigious Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she majored in English with a minor in classics. Since many people could not pronounce her name correctly she changed it to Toni, a shortened version of her middle name. Toni Wofford graduated Howard University in 1953 with a B.A. in English. She attended Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and received a master’s degree in 1955.

After graduating, Toni was offered a job at Texas Southern University in Houston where she taught introductory English. In 1957, she returned to Howard as a member of the faculty. At Howard she met and fell in love with a young Jamaican architect, Harold Morrison. They married in 1958 and had her first son in 1961. Toni continued to teach while taking care of here family, she also joined a small writer’s group as a temporary escape from an unhappy married life.

Each member was required to bring a story or poem for discussion. One week, having nothing to bring, she quickly wrote a story loosely based on a girl she knew in childhood who had prayed to have blue eyes. The story was well received by the group. Toni put it away thinking that she was done with it. When her sons where asleep, she started writing. She dusted off the story in which she had written for discussion in her writers group and decided to make it into a novel. She drew on her memories as a child and expanded on them with her imagination so the characters developed a life of their own. The Bluest Eye was published in 1970, too much critical acclaim, although it was not commercially successful.

The Bluest Eye is a novel of...

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...ican woman, who in her life has overcome a lot, not only in her personal life, but also in the world of being a writer. She has won the Nobel Prize in Literature in which she was the first African American woman to do so. The various writing techniques that she uses not only in The Bluest Eye, but also in all of her novels, are extraordinary.

I hope that many people have shared the experience that I have by reading her books by getting an insight to the many ways in which not only a writer but also anyone can incorporate in his or her writings.

Works Cited

Bakerman, Jane. ”The Seams Can’t Show: An Interview with Toni Morrison.” Black American Literature forum. 12(1978): 56-60.

Dittermar, Linda.”Will the Circle be Unbroken?” The Politics of Form in The Bluest Eye.”Novel. 23.2 (Winter1990): 137-55.

Leflore, Fannie,”Author Morrison uses fiction to challenge prevailing images,” Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Journal, October 20,1990

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Washington Square Press-Pocket Books, 1970.

Stepto, Robert B. “Intimate Things In Place” A Conversation with Toni Morrison.” Massachusetts Review. 18(1977): 473-89