1) Mahaffey, Paul Douglas. “The Adolescent Complexities of Race, Gender, and Class in Toni Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye.’” Race, Gender & Class, vol. 11, no. 4, 2004, pp. 155–165. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43496824

I searched “The Bluest Eye” class on JSTOR as a first broad and simple search, and was glad to find this informative source. My research question mostly focuses on race/class in The Bluest Eye, so this sort of article is helpful in that it contains quotes to support the backbone of my research project.

       2) Mbalia, Doreatha Drummond. “The Bluest Eye: The Need for Racial Approbation.” Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by Janet Witalec, vol. 173, Gale, 2003. Literature Criticism Online, http://link.galegroup.com.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/apps/doc/WBEULT467593299/GLS?u=cuny_hunter&sid=GLS&xid=98cfcc16.

I decided to try out a different database and angle and searched “The Bluest Eye” black elites on Gale Literary Sources. I surprisingly received a decent amount of results (I was afraid that black elites was too specific). This article stood out as not only is it somewhat recent (as in published in the 21st century), but it contains substantial criticism and analysis regarding Maureen Peal and Geraldine.  

3) Wallowitz, Laraine. “Chapter 9: Resisting the White Gaze: Critical Literacy and Toni Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye.’” Counterpoints, vol. 326, 2008, pp. 151–164. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/42980110

After having trouble finding many sources relevant to my research question on Google Scholar and Hunter OneSearch, I decided to hit JSTOR again and searched “The Bluest Eye” white supremacy. This result stuck out as it is more specific than the rest of my sources and a bit “weird”.

4) Gillan, Jennifer. “Focusing on the Wrong Front: Historical Displacement, the Maginot Line, and ‘The Bluest Eye.’” African American Review, vol. 36, no. 2, 2002, pp. 283–298. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1512261

From yet another JSTOR search, this time I used the search term “The Bluest Eye” model minority. Many of my search results were a bit off, but I ended up liking this one as it compares characters of different classes such as the Maginot Line and Maureen Peal.

5) Werrlein, Debra T. “Not so Fast, Dick and Jane: Reimagining Childhood and Nation in the Bluest Eye.” MELUS, vol. 30, no. 4, 2005, pp. 53–72. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30029634

This source is one that we discussed in class, but I decided to include it as Dick and Jane connect surprisingly well to ideas of divided blackness, class, and the ways in which blacks are victimized by white supremacy.

6) X, Malcolm, and Haley Alex. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Grove Press, 1965.

Morrison and Malcolm X were born only 6 years apart, and although I haven’t been able to find anything that Morrison had to say about Malcolm publicly…I realized that there are many similarities in their views on subdivisions of blackness. For example, his Autobiography states, ““Whatever I have done since then, I have driven myself to become a success at it. I’ve often thought that if Mr. Ostrowski had encouraged me to become a lawyer, I would today probably be among some city’s professional black bourgeoisie, sipping cocktails and palming myself off as a community spokesman for and leader of the suffering black masses, while my primary concern would be to grab a few more crumbs from the groaning board of the two-faced whites with whom they’re begging to “integrate.””

     Hinman Abel, Mary. Practical Sanitary and Economic Cooking Adapted to Persons of Moderate and Small Means. American Public Health Organization, 1889, pg.iv, 106.

     Gardaphé, Fred L., and Wenying Xu. “Introduction: Food in Multi-Ethnic Literatures.” MELUS, vol. 32, no. 4, 2007, pp. 5–10. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/30029828.

     Graves, Brian. “You Are What You Beat: Food Metaphors and Southern Black Identity in Twentieth-Century African American Literature and Goodie Mob’s ‘Soul Food.’” Studies in Popular Culture, vol. 38, no. 1, 2015, pp.126. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44259588.

     House, Elizabeth B. “The ‘Sweet Life’ in Toni Morrison’s Fiction.” American Literature, vol. 56, no. 2, 1984, pp. 182. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2925752.

     Kuenz, Jane. “The Bluest Eye: Notes on History, Community, and Black Female Subjectivity.” African American Review, vol. 27, no. 3, 1993, pp. 421–431. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3041932.

I used a combination of JSTOR, Google Scholar, and Hunter College’s Onesearch to find my sources, the latter two often pointed me in the direction of articles from JSTOR. I used the search terms “race,” “black,” “food” and “literature” for the majority of my sources. I used the terms “mary jane candies,” “food,” and “toni morrison” to find relevant existing criticism about my topic. When I was still deciding on my research topic a few weeks ago I went down a rabbit hole trying to research the history of blackberry cobbler (which is a food that appears in TBE). and  found my first source – the cookbook where blackberry cobbler is called a “Brown Betty” for the first time. Though it is an unusual source, the preface and recipe itself sheds light how Morrison uses the dish to say something about blackness, poverty, and class.

Baker, Houston A. “To Move without Moving: An Analysis of Creativity and Commerce in Ralph Ellison’s Trueblood Episode.” PMLA, vol. 98, no. 5, 1983, 828–845. JSTOR,  www.jstor.org/stable/462262.

I found this journal article by searching the terms “Houston Baker Trueblood” on Google Scholar through the Hunter Library Portal. This was the first result. I was nudged in the direction of this source by Professor Allred, who noted this is a classic reading of the Trueblood episode.

Doane, Janice and Devon Hodges. Telling Incest: Narratives of Dangerous Remembering from Stein to Sapphire. The University of Michigan Press, 2001. Print.

I found this book through a journal article that I found on JSTOR entitled “Anatomy of Rape,” which mentioned that this book analyzes both Invisible Man and The Bluest Eye. After only finding reviews of the book by searching its title on JSTOR, I then found a sizeable preview through Google Scholar. I’m not sure yet which page numbers will be relevant, so I will add those to my citation later.

Grogan, Christine. “Morrison Responds to the Psychological Community in The Bluest Eye.”  Father-Daughter Incest in Twentieth-Century American Literature: The Complex Trauma  of the Wound and the Voiceless. Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2016. 75-94. EBSCOhost,  search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2016383186&site=ehost-liVe.

I found this book chapter by searching “the bluest eye” in MLA International Bibliography. I limited the publication date to articles from 2000 onward, since the two other sources I had found thus far were from before 2000, so I wanted a good mix of older and more recent sources. MLA International Bibliography showed that Hunter does not own a copy of the book, but linked me to a Google Books preview which contains most of the chapter on The Bluest Eye.

Koopman, Emy. “Incestuous Rape, Abjection, and the Colonization of Psychic Space in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Shani Mootoo’s Cereus Blooms at Night.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 49, no. 3, July 2013, 303–315. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=mzh&AN=2013394547&site=ehost-live.

I found this journal article through the same search of “the bluest eye” in MLA International Bibliography, with only results from 2000 to now. The search returned 153 results in total and this source was located on the second page of results.

Zender, Karl F. “Faulkner and the Politics of Incest.” American Literature, vol. 70, no. 4, 1998, 739–765. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2902390.

I found this journal article by searching “doubling and incest” on Google Scholar through the Hunter Library Portal. This was the fourth result. I had originally been searching for J.T. Irwin’s book Doubling and incest/repetition and revenge: A speculative reading of Faulkner, as suggested by Professor Allred. However, Hunter does not have access to a full copy of the book. Zender’s work comments on both Irwin and Faulkner, so it is slightly more recent and could also be useful.

Great essay featured in  The New York Times’s podcast Modern Love this week read by Lorraine Toussaint. The podcast and the link to the actual essay Toussaint reads can be found below.

Race Wasn’t An Issue To Him, Which Was An Issue To Me | With Lorraine Toussaint

Interracial relationships come with their own complexities, and there are a lot of questions that come up. Questions like: How does your partner think about race? How do you talk about it? What works, and what doesn’t? Kim McLarin writes about race and dating in her piece, which is read by Lorraine Toussaint (“The Village”).

Within the Invisible Man themes of identity, and power of race, are prevalent.  It’s demonstrated through struggle with invisibility and hypervisibility, how these effects ones identity.