Putnam, Amanda. “Mothering Violence: Ferocious Female Resistance in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Sula, Beloved, and A Mercy.” Black Women, Gender Families, vol. 5, no. 2, 2011, pp. 25–43. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/blacwomegendfami.5.2.0025.

Black Women, Gender & Families analyzes, Black Women’s Studies paradigms. It centers the study of Black women and gender within the critical discourses of history. It also has an article specifically about Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.

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.

This work traces the development of father–daughter incest narratives in the Bluest Eye and Ellison’s Invisible Man. This work explores what Toni Morrison has called the “most delicate,” “most vulnerable” member of society: a female child; and, what happens when the trauma is not just a one event but numerous experiences. Some traumatic experiences, namely father–daughter incest, are culturally reduced to the untellable, and yet accounts of paternal incest are readily available in literature.

PIPES, CANDICE. “Failed Mothers and the Black Girl-Child Victim of Incestuous Rape in The Bluest Eye and Push.” Toni Morrison on Mothers and Motherhood, edited by Lee Baxter and Martha Satz, Demeter Press, Bradford, ON, 2017, pp. 183–200. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1rfzz5n.14.

This work explores a lot of Toni Morrison’s novel and examines the ways in which Morrison’s work deviates from western culture’s ideological norms of mothers, motherhood, and mothering. Pecola’s mother plays a big part in Pecola’s life and how she became who she was at the end of the book so this work which shows how Morrison challenges the concept that mothering, and motherhood will help when writing my essay. This work looks at Morrison’s work through an array of interdisciplinary approaches.

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

This work examines Faulkner’s depiction of incest, finding it to be religious and oedipal. It is said that both Morrison and Ellison were influenced by Faulkner, this could therefore be used to analyze Morrison and Ellison.

Putnam, Amanda. “Mothering Violence: Ferocious Female Resistance in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Sula, Beloved, and A Mercy.” Black Women, Gender Families, vol. 5, no. 2, 2011, pp. 25–43. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/blacwomegendfami.5.2.0025.

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.

PIPES, CANDICE. “Failed Mothers and the Black Girl-Child Victim of Incestuous Rape in The Bluest Eye and Push.” Toni Morrison on Mothers and Motherhood, edited by Lee Baxter and Martha Satz, Demeter Press, Bradford, ON, 2017, pp. 183–200. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1rfzz5n.14.

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

The Bluest Eye and Invisible Man both feature scenes of incestuous rape. Why? What is the significance of these scenes for the book? The Author? And the culture around the book?

The first chapter of Citizen is comprised of fragments from different racist interactions. The way the story is told, in the second person point of view using the word: you, puts the reader in the story, now a character rather than someone who is distant from the story. The interactions go all the way from honest mistakes to racist shouting, all one after another!  (The first few fragments are even from a child’s perspetive, giving the reader a feeling of being “an other” which goes away over the course of the chapter.) According to the dictionary a microaggression is a statement, action, or incident regarded as an instance of indirect, subtle, or unintentional discrimination against members of a marginalized group such as a racial or ethnic minority, these are all microaggressions. Microaggressions aren’t all out racial slurs, like from one of the fragments, but rather a man thinking it wrong that he has to hire a person of color rather than “a great writer” or a woman blaming affirmative action for the reason her son had to go a different prestigious school from the one she wanted him to go to, like from two other fragments.
One of the interactions is something we know all to well, as it is always on the news (remember Permit Patty and Cornerstore Caroline?), you went to see a movie, your black friend, who is watching you kid, stepped out of the house to make a call when your white neighbor calls the police on him. The police are gone when you arrive back home, and the neighbor is apologizing. However, this is more than just a familiar scene. Rankine names the movie: The House We Live. The House We Live is part of a documentary about racism and injustice, it focused on systematized racial inequalities. Even though this first part of Citizen focused on everyday interactions, both awake the viewer/reader to racial injustice that happens around them every day (whether it be intentional or unintentional) that, if they are white, may not experience.
Microaggressions are all over America, as much today as they were five years ago when Citizen was first published.

The final chapter of The Bluest Eye opens with Pecola talking to her imaginary friend, she cannot stop herself from looking in the mirror at and at the blue eyes she believes she has. She accuses her imaginary friend and Mrs. Breedlove of being jealous of her eyes. Pecola also believes her ostracizement from the community is a result of them being prejudiced against her eyes, which are bluer then theirs. In reality, Pecola’s obsession with white beauty standards and the trauma she has experienced caused a psychotic break. Pecola is isolated from the community, not because of her blue eyes but instead because they hate what she reveals about them.
Through the rest of the conversation we can see how Pecola perceives her rape. Although, she can’t seem to fully understand what happened, trying to figure out if Cholly loved Mrs. Breedlove or forced her into sex. The imaginary friend continued to pry about the rape, showing its power over her mind and thoughts. She wants to distract herself and provide relief from it by talking about her eyes. However, now she becomes insecure about whether or not they are blue enough. Perhaps, showing her realization that her obsession to achieve blue eyes and white beauty is fruitless due to her natural blackness.
Her isolation from the community becomes more literal when she moves to the outskirts of town. The town now uses Pecola as a reference to compare themselves to in which they always come out on top. Claudia, who is narrating this part of the book, knows that this is only to cover the townspeople’s own self-hatred and insecurity.
Saying the idea of love at the end of The Bluest Eye is complicated would be under selling it. Throughout the book the black characters love of idealized white beauty deforms the black characters. (I need to say I do not, in any way, think love and rape can ever be connected. Rape is about power, lust, and hate. Rape is never about love. That being said, in this novel they wanted to connect love with rape.) Cholly’s love combined with anger allows him to rape his daughter. However, Claudia, who is not as exposed to racism, loves both Pecola and her baby, wanting them both to live, she tells Pecola’s story with compassion that the other characters lack. She uses a metaphor about the earth and flowers to say that fault of these outcomes to due to the racist world they live in and the issue of racism is a huge issue that needs to be dealt and cannot be destroyed by pointing out on racist at a time.