The Bluest Eye
Novel by Toni MorrisonWikipedia
78
MENTIONS
30
EPISODES
24
PODCASTS
Search complete. 78 mentions across 30 episodes found for "The Bluest Eye".
Oct 1, 2026
Jordan StephensHOST
It really is.
Miquita OliverHOST
One of the most banned books, most commonly banned books, is The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison.
Miquita OliverHOST
Wow.
Jordan StephensHOST
Mm.
Miquita OliverHOST
That's upsetting.
Miquita OliverHOST
That's fucking upsetting.
Miquita OliverHOST
You know, The, The Bluest Eye changed my mom's life.
Miquita OliverHOST
Sorry.
MelindaPANELIST
... sexual abuse, um, torture of children.
MelindaPANELIST
A- and, and she is a phenomenal writer and, um, all of her books, Beloved, The Bluest Eye, I've forced myself to listen to, usually in audiobook form, and, and it's made me nauseous because-
SarahHOST
Mm
MelindaPANELIST
...
speaker_1HOST
You see heavy hitters of global literature.
speaker_1HOST
You have Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Judy Blume's Forever.
speaker_2HOST
Huge names.
speaker_1HOST
And then you have these incredibly popular modern young adult and fantasy authors, like Sarah J. Maas.
speaker_1HOST
That is the mathematical average.
speaker_2HOST
That's almost two decades.
speaker_1HOST
Some of them, like Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, go back to 1970.
speaker_1HOST
Judy Blume's Forever was published in 1975.
Mike CliffordHOST
gets to tell your story? That's at the heart of Banned Books Week, which begins October the 4th.
Mike CliffordHOST
This year, the focus is on books about trans people and black history, including Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, banned recently by a Georgia school district.
Mike CliffordHOST
Dean Steed is Director of Communications at the Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative.
Dean SteedSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
We just released a new zine called How We Talk About Us, which looks at the harmful narratives about Black trans people.
Mike CliffordHOST
Who gets to tell your story? That's at the heart of Banned Books Week, which begins October the 4th.
Mike CliffordHOST
This year, the focus is on books about trans people and Black history, including Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, banned recently by a Georgia school district.
Mike CliffordHOST
Dean Steed is Director of Communications at the Solutions Not Punishment Collaborative.
Dean SteedSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
We just released a new zine called How We Talk About Us, which looks at the harmful narratives about Black trans people.
Joe SkelleyHOST
I think about the book band conversations where a person came in angrily about either Sula or the blue.
Joe SkelleyHOST
I think it was the bluest eye.
Joe SkelleyHOST
Mira, I think I'm telling your story.
Joe SkelleyHOST
Yeah, that was me.
CaseyHOST
I came across and kind of doing my research, a lot of, it's another book by Toni Morrison.
CaseyHOST
It's called The Bluest Eye.
CaseyHOST
So that one's been frequently challenged and banned.
CaseyHOST
Have you guys heard of that one?
Jimmy ConradADVERTISER
years earlier?
Clint SmithHOST
Well, after waking up at 4 a.m. each morning to work on it while raising her two children on her own, it became her first published novel, The Bluest Eye.
Clint SmithHOST
It came out in 1970 when Toni was 39 years old.
Clint SmithHOST
The Bluest Eye is about Pecola Bredlock, a young Black girl who had an extremely difficult childhood and believed that her life would be better if she just had blue eyes like the white people around her.
Clint SmithHOST
It was seen by some as a controversial book and was met with pretty mixed reviews.
Clint SmithHOST
But Toni Morrison stated in later interviews that the book's reception was very similar to how other characters treated her main character in the novel.
Clint SmithHOST
Morrison said she was dismissed, trivialized, misread.
Clint SmithHOST
The lack of a warm initial reception for The Bluest Eye didn't stop Morrison.
Mabel O. WilsonGUEST
It was my last semester at Columbia.
Mabel O. WilsonGUEST
I ended up looking at Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, so I ended up looking at a novel.
Mabel O. WilsonGUEST
Uh, and she begins that novel, and I've spoken about this before publicly, with, um, an excerpt from a Dick and Jane reader.
Mabel O. WilsonGUEST
You know, like, "See Spot run.
Mabel O. WilsonGUEST
It's, it's beyond utterance.
Mabel O. WilsonGUEST
You can't speak it.
Mabel O. WilsonGUEST
Um, and that I think she did so that she could show this is the world that the girl, Pecola, in The Bluest Eye lived.
Mabel O. WilsonGUEST
She's learning about the world through Dick and Jane.
Sarah L. KaufmanGUEST
And again, boiling that all down to the essence.
Sarah L. KaufmanGUEST
Do you have a favorite of her books? I really like The Bluest Eye is where that example comes from.
Sarah L. KaufmanGUEST
I've never read a book that took my breath away and made me physically hurt the way Beloved did.
Sarah L. KaufmanGUEST
Yeah.
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