MORRISON, TONI. BLUEST EYE. VINTAGE CLASSICS, 2007.
Stern, Katherine. “Toni Morrison’s Beauty Formula.” The Aesthetics of Toni Morrison: Speaking the Unspeakable, by Marc Cameron. Conner, Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2002, pp. 77–91.
-Stern discusses Morrison’s contempt and uncertainty towards the idea of “Black is beautiful”. In her essay, Stern shows how Morrison draws our attention away from the visual object, towards an experience of physical beauty that is tangible through efforts to feel as well as see versus the imaginary definition that is expressed in media, in which Morrison condemns.
“HARLEM’S ‘NATURAL SOUL’: Selling Black Beauty to the Diaspora in the Early 1960s.” Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul, by Tanisha C. Ford, University of North Carolina Press, 2015, pp. 41–66. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5149/9781469625164_ford.6. Accessed 24 Nov. 2020.
-This chapter focuses on the rise of black beauty and figures in the 1960’s. It discusses the transformations from natural beauty to the start of the wig culture, as well as the issues that arose from the conflicting markets. Although set in Harlem, it provides perspective on the subject of beauty and its evolution, as well as assimilation into a whiter definition of beauty.
Morrison, Toni. “WHY I WROTE THE BLUEST EYE – An Interview With Toni Morrison.” Youtube.com, 8 Aug. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0JkI3F6z-Y. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.
-In this interview, Toni Morrison discusses her reasoning for writing The Bluest Eye. She mentions her previous work in publishing and her love for books, by then talking about the importance of her own writing and the process in which she developed the characters for the novel.
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, www.jstor.org/stable/30029634. Accessed 23 Nov. 2020.
-Werrlein dissects the ideas presented in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye in contrast to the popular Dick & Jane books of the time, as well as the depiction of childhood crisis that grew popular in media. Werrlein acknowledges the socioeconomic reasoning that factors in to Toni Morrison’s commentary on the “ugliness” of blackness.
“5 A Foucauldian (Genealogical) Reading of Whiteness:the Production of the Black Body/Self and the Racial Deformation of Pecola Breedlove in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” What White Looks like: African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question, by George Yancy, Routledge, 2004, pp. 107–138, ebookcentral.proquest.com.
-Yancy explores blackness as the subject of white knowledge. He delves into the “European imaginary” and how it defined blackness, bringing in Morrison’s The Bluest Eye into the discussion. Yancy dissects the ideals of beauty and its internalized reflection in the black community.
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