The Bluest Eye

This is one of the most poignant proses I have read yet. It proceeded to open up a multitude of different aspects hidden, unheard or forgotten by me.

Firstly, is the author (Toni Morrison)'s challenge of the conventional wisdom of beauty. This book talks about the yearnings of a little black girl to have blue eyes like those pretty white girls in midland USA. The full lips, flared nostrils are still despised in our culture, with such pre-conceived notion of beauty. And the racism and the hatred that this book talks about still prevails in so many parts of the world. I can now have a deeper insight into the rowdy black men everyones scared of over here, the old fat black ladies so polite and courteous. I remember an incident on a greyhound coach, when I was sitting beside an old black lady: she was returning from visiting her daughter and grandchildren and was full of stories about them, made me eat some food she was having as I was looked famished apparently. Incidents like these touch us, books like these make a deep etch. And one yearns to be a better person rising above such petty fastidiousness that seems to engulf so many of us.

A second aspect this nobel prize winning literature opened up for me was the style of writing. The multi-pronged layered approach, interjected by narrations from various sources. The writer gives away the end in the preface, thereby piquing our interest to know more of the painful details.

A third aspect is my getting to read this nobel itself. Made me completely sure that I had made the right choice for my companion. Getting an opportunity to know about and discuss books like these, was what I was missing recently. A whole aspect of me was withering away.