The book was The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. The pattern is Pecola.
I had The Bluest Eye in my bookcase but I had not yet read it. Once I picked it up, printed the pattern and casted on....well, the knitting went by the wayside until I got the book finished. This is Morrison's debut novel and her writing from the start is just lyrical. I kept going back to re-read passages, initially because they were beautiful, then again because they were so impactful.
We're in 1941 and Pecola, a young black girl, yearns to have blue eyes. It's one of her greatest wishes. Pecola is constantly told that she is ugly. Her family is ugly and everyone just accepts that this is true. Pecola is sure that if she had blue eyes, she couldn't be ugly anymore. The novel is mostly narrated by Claudia, another young black girl, with whom Pecola has to stay with when Pecola's father sets their own house on fire.
Claudia firmly believes she is beautiful. She, and so many others, use Pecola's ugliness as a way to make themselves feel better. But I think Claudia is only person to acknowledge that in the novel. Pecola's father is an alcoholic, abusive man. Her mother shows more care and affection to the white children she cares for than her own kids. Her brother has ran away too many times to count, never taking Pecola with him. Eventually, Cholly, Pecola's father, rapes her. She ends up pregnant when she is still just a child herself.
Pecola eventually gets her blue eyes....in her mind. She descends into a mental breakdown and the final chapters put us in her head as she spirals downward.
The abuse Pecola endures, not just from her family, but from her community, is almost unbearable to read about. When Pecola wishes for blue eyes, it's to achieve the beauty of "whiteness" as if only white people can be beautiful. When I started unpacking that, I honestly didn't know what to do with it. I listened to interviews by Morrison about this novel and discovered it's the same today. Whiteness is held up as a standard a beauty, even for black people, and that makes zero sense to me. I know that beauty is supposed to be a virtue in our society. You must be attractive, you must be beautiful, to be somebody, anybody. That is now, and always was, an incredibly damaging virtue to strive for. But it's even more damaging to tell black folks that they must strive to look as white as possible to be considered beautiful.
The world is unyielding (Morrison's words) to black girls. In this novel, you feel like Pecola doesn't stand a chance, that everyone sees her drowning and no one steps in to help. Claudia and her sister seem to be the only ones who are rooting for Pecola and her baby. Everyone else takes a step back.
This was an eye opening novel. Morrison has been on my list of favorite authors since I read Beloved so I'm glad the Drunk Knitter started her book club to get us reading.
And I finally got back to the knitting and it's working up so beautifully!
I like Toni's answer. Why would she be asked this when I would bet money that white authors are not asked the same question?
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