Narrative Imagination: The Bluest Eye
Multicultural Education
Narrative Imagination Paper: The Bluest Eye
Pamela Scott
October 23, 2006
Narrative Imagination Paper: The Bluest Eye
What would cause a twelve year old Black girl to yearn for blue
eyes? A black girl, Pecola Breedlove, a character in this Toni
Morrison novel had a profound and an earnest desire to possess blue
eyes. She felt it would be an honor to acquire this symbol of
American beauty. Her life of misery would somehow be altered if her
eye color was transformed to a shade of blue. This message was
conveyed to Pecola by the majority race as well as the minority races
in Lorrain, Ohio. Her blackness identified her as the vilest of
creatures on the planet earth. As I read this book I remembered a
set of sisters at a church I attended who were reaching for the
American ideal of beauty. They came to church one Sunday with blue
eyes reflecting from their black skin. I greeted them as usual, but I
was greatly distracted by their eye color. I personally felt the blue
contact lenses made them appear as aliens from another galaxy. I had
difficulty holding a conversation with them and I could not gaze into
their eyes. I pondered why these black young ladies would purchase
and sport blue contacts lenses. Why was their eye color not
acceptable? B. Omolade (1994) in The Rising Song of African American
Women critiques racism and gender. She writes about the White
patriarchal standards of beauty and how black females are evaluated
by their physical characteristics, hair texture, and social skills.
There seems to be a lot of pressure to fit the norm and possess the
American standards of...
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