Gillan, Jennifer. “Focusing on the wrong front: historical displacement, the Maginot Line, and The Bluest Eye.” African American Review, vol. 36, no. 2, 2002, p. 283+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A89872243/AONE?u=cuny_hunter&sid=AONE&xid=82c9b322. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

• • This piece discusses how the Breedloves are initially and repeatedly dehumanized through interactions with their surrounding society, and the reinforcement of the idea that they are something less than the ideal American citizen. Gillan outlines this by examining the social trends surrounding the settings Morrison chooses and how they map onto the characters and their relationships.

Hovet, Grace Ann, and Barbara Lounsberry. “Flying as Symbol and Legend in Toni Morrison’s ‘The Bluest Eye,’ ‘Sula,’ and ‘Song of Solomon.’” CLA Journal, vol. 27, no. 2, 1983, pp. 119–140. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44321768. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

• • Hovet and Lounsberry’s focus on flying and birds speaks directly to my topic, positioning the concepts on a timeline of Black literature. The association between flying and falling is also heavily explored, circling back into the link between animality and societal othering.

McWeeny, Jennifer. “Topographies of Flesh: Women, Nonhuman Animals, and the Embodiment of Connection and Difference.” Hypatia, vol. 29, no. 2, 2014, pp. 269–286. www.jstor.org/stable/24542034. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

• • “Topographies of Flesh” as a topic is one that speaks directly to the flesh-twisting nature of the animal association. Despite this piece focusing on Beloved, it still speaks to Morrison’s greater project on race and feminism, as well as her examinations of how larger groups of people (do/n’t) relate to each other. McWeeny’s feminist approach explores this intersectionality and uses a human woman/nonhuman paradigm to explore a new kind of ontological connection that can account for the complexity of social space and what it means to take up space.

Pergadia, Samantha. “Like an Animal: Genres of the Nonhuman in the Neo-Slave Novel.” African American Review, vol. 51, no. 4, Winter 2018, pp. 288–304. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1353/afa.2018.0054.

• • This article looks at Morrison’s greater ideology through another of her works, using the link between slavery and animals built into the phrase “chattel slavery.” The reproduction of ideas that link physical characteristics to humanity and morality will be of particular interest, being common across racism in any era.

Vasquez, Sam. “In Her Own Image: Literary and Visual Representations of Girlhood in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and Jamaica Kincaid’s Annie John.” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism, vol. 12, no. 1, 2014, p. 58+. Gale Academic OneFile, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A365688777/AONE?u=cuny_hunter&sid=AONE&xid=d1f1dab9. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

• • Here is the main intersection between my topic and Morrison’s parodying of dominant culture, which serves to establish the boundaries of “humanity.” The essay simultaneously expands the somewhat Americentric concepts I plan to develop to an international level with the heavy analysis of Kincaid and the sociohistorical implications of specific (animal) imagery.

Wong, Shelley. “Transgression as Poesis in The Bluest Eye.” Callaloo, vol. 13, no. 3, 1990, pp. 471–481 .JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2931331. Accessed 17 Nov. 2020.

• • Again using the primer as a starting point, this piece examines Morrison’s use and deformation of language on a physical level, essentially looking at the way she reformats words on the page: typographical arrangements as symbolic representations of different kinds of family situations. Wong also draws parallels between Morrison’s writing and jazz music, examining her prose as a specifically Black formation with essential qualities akin to specifically Black music. Wong argues that in spatial terms, Morrison rhymes by distributing human and animal characteristics amongst her characters, linking both through a shared materiality.

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