I was watching some show on the ABC channel about books that have been banned from libraries in the USA. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison was one of them. It intrigued me as to why this was seen as a controversial book and I’m not sure (or don’t remember) which group members decided that they should not be part of a school library. So I borrowed it from my local library, which luckily still have it in their shelves. The American book banning wave has not reached the Australian shores yet….

So before I read this book, I deliberately did not want to know why it was banned or what this was all about. I just started reading it. The story was about a black girl name Pecola who wished to have blue eyes and blond hair so that she could be beautiful and be seen. What I found was a sad story but there was truth and warmth to the way Morrison potrayed her characters. There was no judgement, it was what it was. And her writing was beautiful and poetic. She did not shy away from how life was or would have been for Black people in small towns in the the 1940’s America. Yes it had racism, domestic violence, incest, rape and child abuse. And as a reader it made me understand Black culture at that time. But I did not find blame in her writing. Characters did ask how they became the way they were but it was not answered directly. It just felt like they fell into some kind of a dream or in this case a nightmare that they couldn’t escape from. It felt hopeless.

I really love this book even though it was sad. Maybe the reason people wanted this out of school libraries in the USA was because it made people uncomfortable and the subject matter was inappropriate to be read by school children. I don’t know. I still think it’s important to learn what it was or is like to have the lived experience of Black people in the USA. We could never fully understand or know but at least Morrison had given us an inkling of what it would be like to be a girl in a society who taught her that her kind was ‘ugly’.