Toni Morrison's powerful study of childhood abuse, incest and racism, The Bluest Eye, is taught in many high schools today.
Pecola lives in a home where wisdom, kindness and bedtime stories do not exist, where sometimes even the home doesn't exist.

But Pecola's greatest concern is her appearance - she is plain, the kind of child ignored by teachers and salesclerks
and taunted by classmates. Worst of all, she herself believes she is ugly. And so this African-American child of God dreams of having beautiful blue eyes, bluer even than Shirley Temple's.

The only people who ever show her attention are the three whores who live above her apartment. Her most poignant moment comes when she asks a white spiritualist to perform a miracle and grant her the wish of blue eyes, so that she might find love.

When her father Cholly brings the ultimate degradation to his twelve year old daughter, a rape that impregnates her, she can take it no more. The baby, born too soon, dies, and Pecola passes over into the realm of madness where she truly believes her eyes are blue.

No book serves as a better example of why censorship is misguided. Some school districts have banned this book, denying their students the insights Pecola's story provides about self-acceptance and outward rejection. This, Toni Morrison's first novel, shows in its powerful and haunting language, why she eventually received the Nobel Prize.

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