Toni Morrison, author of The Bluest Eye and Nobel Prize winner, is well-respected for the literature she writes. This type of literature is called Recovery Literature, which is defined as an effort on the part of contemporary writers who, in the wake of cultural fragmentation brought on by integration, seek to recall aspects of the past African American culture when they were contained in small cohesive communities tied closely to the land of the rural south. Recovery Literature such as The Bluest Eye is essential in any learning environment due to the history it represents, but School Boards across the nation are having these books removed from the shelves. There are several cases where concerned parents wish to remove Morrison’s The Bluest Eye due to its graphic language. Parents in these challenges on graphic language wish to censor the incestuous rape scene and the language used when describing sexual actions that occur in the book. In other cases the book is accused of being anti-white on the basis of two situations in the book where whites are mentioned. Censoring Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye due to its incestuous rape scene, anti-white claims and graphic language is wrong because school boards are removing the history of African American culture in the 1940s.
One major reason parents wish to ban Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is for the rape scene. The sad and misunderstood rape of Pecola by her father Cholly is interpreted at face value. For example the Littleton Public School Districts, LPSD, “pulled all copies of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye . . . from the shelves of its high school libraries . . . [when] The board decision to remove the novel . . . was in response to a parent who challenged its explicit descriptio...
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... Bluest Eye. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2010. 97-101. EBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 16 Apr. 2014.
"Censorship Roundup." School Library Journal 51.12 (2005): 20. Literary Reference Center. Web. 4 Apr. 2014.
Foerstel, Herbert N. "The Most Frequently Banned or Challenged Books, 1996–2000." Banned In The U.S.A : A Reference Guide To Book Censorship In Schools And Public Libraries. Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 2002. 231-32. EBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
Hull, Mary. Censorship In America : A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, Calif: n.p., 1999.
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Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Vintage, 1970. Print.
Books that have shaped America are slowly starting to disappear. Many of the previous social norms have fallen out of fashion, and because of this reason numerous books are beginning to become banned. Blasphemy, racism, sex, and violence are all ethical reasons for books to be censored.
Baldassarro, R. W. "Banned Books Awareness: The Call of the Wild." Banned Books Awareness. Deep Forest Productions, 24 July 2011. Web. 18 Apr. 2014.
Toni Morrison's novel, The Bluest Eye contributes to the study of the American novel by bringing to light an unflattering side of American history. The story of a young black girl named Pecola, growing up in Lorain, Ohio in 1941 clearly illustrates the fact that the "American Dream" was not available to everyone. The world that Pecola inhabits adores blonde haired blue eyed girls and boys. Black children are invisible in this world, not special, less than nothing. The idea that the color of your skin somehow made you lesser was cultivated by both whites and blacks. White skin meant beauty and privilege and that idea was not questioned at this time in history. The idea that the color of your skin somehow made you less of a person contaminated black people's lives in many different ways. The taunts of schoolboys directed at Pecola clearly illustrate this fact; "It was their contempt for their own blackness that gave the first insult its teeth" (65). This self hatred also possessed an undercurrent of anger and injustice that eventually led to the civil rights movement.
Ockerbloom, John Mark, ed. “Banned Books Online.” Banned Books Online. The Online Books Page, 1 Jan. 2009. Web. 13 Nov. 2009. .
Foerstel, Herbert N. Banned in the U.S.A.: a Reference Guide to Book Censorship in Schools and Public Libraries. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. Print.
There is a difference between banned books and challenged books. According to the American Library Association (ALA), “A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group (About banned, para. 2). A banned book is when a book or other reading material is removed from certain locations and not available. For example, one of the most challenged books in the 21st century is The Giver by Lois Lowry (100 Most). The novel, The Absolutely True Story of a Part-Time Indian by Sheman Alexie was banned in high school in Oregon because a parent complained that the book was offensive (Doyle, 3).
Trelease, Jim. "Book Banning Violates Children and Young Adult Freedoms." Book Banning. Ed. Ronnie D. Lankford. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2007. At Issue. Rpt. from "Censorship and Children's Books." Trelease-on-Reading.com. 2006.Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 31 Mar. 2014.
Books are banned for many reasons but more times than not it is because of the sensitive information found within the novel that agitates the reader. As long as people have been able to develop their own opinions, others have sought to prevent them from sharing. At some point in time, every idea has ultimately become objectionable to someone. The most frequently challenged and most visible targets of such objection are the very books found in classrooms and public libraries. These controversial novels teach lessons that sometimes can be very sensitive to some but there is much more to challenged books than a controversial topic. What lies within these pages is a wealth of knowledge, such as new perspectives for readers, twisting plots, and expressions that are found nowhere else. For example, To Kill A Mockingbird, contains references to rape, racial content, and profanity that have caused many to challenge the novel in the first place. The book was banned from countless
Aliprandini, Michael Sprague, Carolyn. "Banning Books: An Overview." Points Of View: Banning Books (2013): 1. Points of View Reference Center. Web. 19 Apr. 2014.
Banned Books Week.” Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read American Library Association, 21st Sept. 2005. Web.02 March 2016
An unexpected twist, that Pecola’s bright, blue eyes would be the source of her blindness. Nothing pummeled at her mind more than her inexorable yearning for a physical trait exclusive to white culture. The porcelain-skinned children of storybooks taught her that beautiful, sparkling blue eyes were the golden key to beauty, and she retained this information well. She wasn’t the only one. Girls of colored skin have been pressured for years to strip themselves of their culture—mentally, emotionally, even physically—and not much has changed. Toni Morrison forces us to confront the formidable oppression pressed onto people of color by people void of it in her novel, The Bluest Eye.
Staff, Wire Reports. (2002 October 3). Book banning spans the globe. The Houston Chronicle, pp.C14. Retrieved December 2, 2002 from Lexis-Nexis/Academic database.
Simmons, John S., and Eliza T. Dresang. School Censorship in the 21st Century: a Guide for Teachers and School Library Media Specialists. Newark, DE: International Reading Association, 2001. Print.
In the novel The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, she exposes the suffering produced by the problems caused by gender and race oppression through the experiences of African-American children. During the 1940’s, the United States had composed an identity through mass media with books such as “Dick and Jane”, and movies like “Sherley Temple.” These media sources provided a society based on national innocence. In the novel, Morrison relates to and exposes the very real issues that were hidden by the idea of the stereotypical white middle-class family.
Russell, Rick. "Studies in Censorship - the Index of Banned Books." Yahoo Contributor Network. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Jan. 2014.