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The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison’s debut and widely banned novel is a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A PARADE BEST BOOK OF ALL TIME • From the acclaimed Nobel Prize winner that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace.
 
In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment.
 
Here, Morrison’s writing is “so precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry” (
The New York Times).

Listen to an Audio Clip from The Bluest Eye, read by
Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison

About Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison is the author of eleven novels and three essay collections. She received the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and in 1993 the Nobel Prize in Literature. She died in 2019.

Photo © Deborah Feingold via Getty Images.

Events

Sep 25 2024 (Wed)
Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine
Correspondances. Reading Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison
From September 21, 2024, to December 15, 2024, Crédac presents "Correspondances. Reading Angela Davis, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison", a group exhibition celebrating the enduring impact of these iconic authors on activism and education.
12:00 PM CEST
Nov 1 2024 (Fri)
Lorain, OH
Toni Morrison Poetry Contest
Local students in grades six to 12 and adult residents of Lorain County are invited to submit an original poem, based on the theme “Where We Live.”
12:00 PM EDT
Nov 8 2024 (Fri)
La Fabrika, Prague
McKinley Dixon: Prague Sounds Debut
The Czech premiere of one of the most current young names in American hip-hop—dynamic rapper McKinley Dixon. Dixon’s recent album, Beloved! Paradise? Jazz! is named after three of the most famous works by American author Toni Morrison, whom he regards as “the greatest rapper of all time.”
8:00 PM CST

Honors and Awards

1977: National Book Critics Circle Award for Song of Solomon

1988: American Book Award for Beloved

1988: Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Beloved

1993: Nobel Prize in Literature

1993: Commander of the Arts and Letters, Paris

1996: National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters

2000: National Humanities Medal

2010: Officier de la Légion d'Honneur

2011: Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction

2012: Presidential Medal of Freedom

2014: Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award given by the National Book Critics Circle

2020: Designation of "Toni Morrison Day" in Ohio, to be celebrated annually on her birthday, February 18

2021: The Toni Morrison Achievement Award was established with the National Book Critics Circle

A Celebration of the Life of Toni Morrison

Contact

Permissions (CAA): amanda.urbanasst@caa.com

Permissions for use of the papers: boatman@princeton.edu

Publicity: Todd Doughty, tdoughty@penguinrandomhouse.com

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