Toni Morrison’s first novel,The Bluest Eye was her effort to depict racial self-loathing and to question the standards of beauty in America.
In an afterword of the 1999 edition of The Bluest Eye Morrison states that “…even the casual racial contempt can cause devastation.”
Award winning editor and writer Dorothy Allisonwrote of Morrison’s talent in handling the narrator, Claudia, of The Bluest Eye:
“It was the storyteller, Claudia, who looked at the world with unflinching honesty, the beauty, and the ugliness alike. I understood her the way she raked her own soul, holding herself responsible for sins she should never have thought hers.”
Carol Balawyder 