Author Archives: Lily Kyaw

Annotated Bibliography

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FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, MAY 2007 Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye (Vintage International) Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Biju, Vidhiya. “Social Barriers Revealed out in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” Shanlax International Journal of English, vol. 6, no. S1, 2018, pp. 46–50.

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1421133

  • This is journal article about discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity, race, religion or social status are some of the social barriers. This journal article also exposes the social barriers which lead to the marginalization of the blacks in the white social order in The Bluest Eye. Through the article main focus on social barriers and its effects on the lives of the African Americans. Also, giving example of Pecola suffers and is doomed because she belongs to a black community, a marginalized group.

 

Zebialowicz, A., Palasinski, M. Probing Racial Dilemmas in the Bluest Eye with the Spyglass of Psychology. J Afr Am St 14, 220–233 (2010).

https://doi-org.proxy.wexler.hunter.cuny.edu/10.1007/s12111-009-9100-y

  • The purpose of this article is to help rekindle interest in psychology as a tool to explain the racial dilemmas of Toni Morrison’s female characters in The Bluest Eye. Rather than questioning established analytical methods, it illustrates how modern human thinking science provides valuable insights, especially in verifying the behavior and thinking of these characters.

 

Hassan Khan, Rahman. “The Framework of Racism in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye: A Psychosocial Interpretation.” Advances in language and literary studies 5.2 (2014): 25–28. Web.

  • This article includes victims of Toni Morrison’s racist ideology and racial abuse. The article also traces the abusive attitude of the characters in the inner racist framework in The Bluest Eye of African Americans.

 

Griffin, Farah. “On The Ethical Dimensions of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” College literature 47.4 (2020): 671–677. Web.

  • This article includes not only about race and racism but also focus on that novel’s portrayal of the devastating consequences of internalized white supremacy on its protagonist, Pecola. It also discusses the behavior of hateful middle-class neighbors, poverty, and parental neglect that contribute to the destruction of children.

 

Krupa, N. Dyva. “RACISM AND RELIGION IN TONI MORRISON’S THE BLUEST EYE.” VEDA’S JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE (JOELL) An International Peer Reviewed Journal, 20 Jan. 2015, joell.in/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/racism-and-religion.pdf.

  • This paper article explores the relationship among the chief components of race and religion within the fictional narratives of African American women writer, the novel of Toni Morrison in her first novel The Bluest Eye. This paper article also examines the nature of the blacks’ struggle for their intellectual (race) and spiritual (religion) endurance in a predominantly multicultural post-colonial white America.

 

 

Unfreedoms

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In Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen” there are different situations and those situations bring messages in different circumstances at a particular moment. The author tried to situate the readers in a certain position to reveal each situation of being justice and fairness. In the video Situation 5, Lucas and Rankine said “these are multi-genre responses to contemporary America. The videos exist around public experiences in individual lives. These experiences turn into situations that resonate with us not only as people but as citizens.” The author mentions that we as citizens trying to look into the specialized framework of specific events and also particularly trying to pay attention to how the media communicate to us. In the second poem about Trayvon Martin, the author Rankine continues to refer to “my brother, dear brother, my dearest brothers, dear heart.” When she uses the terms, she assumes to refer to her brothers as a narrative. The narrator is telling her memory with her brothers who used to call her name to wish on her birthday as “They do regular things, like wait. On my birthday they say my name. They will never forget that we are named. What is that memory?” (Kindle Edition. 458) When I see the term “dearest brothers” and I think she is referring to black people especially to those being treated differently. Rankine uses herself as the narrator to illustrate calling some fair facts by comparing it with calling out only one name on a normal birthday. She wants her readers to see past or present lives of African Americans are being discriminated against. The situation in this second poem is to allow readers to see the unfair reality and they are still being treated differently to this day. There is also a black and white photograph of many people were under the tree and also a man is pointing to the dark tree. In the photograph, there are two men also watch as a man pointed direction. (478) In this photograph, a black background represents a visual metaphor for the construction of blackness. The tree also can mean the decree that determines all life. The title of the fifth poem is also called ” Stop-and-Frisk.” This poem is about a police vehicle coming to a creaking stop, and the police force the narrator to get on the ground. The narrator thinks the stop is because of speeding but he didn’t. The narrator is told to do fingerprinting and stand naked after the charge of exhibiting speed is decided upon. At the end of the poem, there is a black and white photograph of black people. The photograph is not clear enough to see and it seems covered by black paint or something. The fifth poem’s situation tries to tell us that if hatred and resentment exist, no matter how right the speaker is, there is always guilty for something as “And you are not the guy and still you fit the description because there is only one guy who is always the guy fitting the description. This is all because he is only suitable for description and not criminals” (523). This is the message Rankine brings throughout her book, and that African Americans are expected to endure racism every day. There is a quote “Overcome in the moonlight” represents that they are conquering and discovering who they truly are.

Simple Bibliography

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What role does social class play in the novel “The Bluest Eye?”

Primary source

FIRST VINTAGE INTERNATIONAL EDITION, MAY 2007 Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye (Vintage International) Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Secondary sources

Hassan Khan, Rahman. “The Framework of Racism in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye: A Psychosocial Interpretation.” Advances in language and literary studies 5.2 (2014): 25–28. Web.

Griffin, Farah. “On The Ethical Dimensions of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” College literature 47.4 (2020): 671–677. Web.

Roye, Susmita. “TONI MORRISON’S DISRUPTED GIRLS AND THEIR DISTURBED GIRLHOODS: ‘The Bluest Eye’ and ‘A Mercy.’” Callaloo 35.1 (2012): 212–227. Web.

Holloway, Karla F. C., and Stephanie A. Demetrakopoulos. New Dimensions of Spirituality: a Biracial and Bicultural Reading of the Novels of Toni Morrison. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987. Print.

Zebialowicz, A., Palasinski, M. Probing Racial Dilemmas in the Bluest Eye with the Spyglass of Psychology. J Afr Am St 14, 220–233 (2010).

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For my search I am going to use one primary source Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Kindle Edition. For my secondary sources I am going to use from Hunter College Library Database. I am going to use five secondary sources to do my research. In this research I am going discuss details on the basis of gender, ethnicity, race, religion or social status in the novel “The Bluest Eye.” The objective of my research paper is to have a look at social barrier due to the framework of internalized racism in the African American community.

Picture speaks louder than words

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Citizen: American lyric is monologues and images of poetry that capture racism and different inner life ideas. This book is about the experience of racism in the United States on a small and larger level, from daily racist events, from subways to police brutality and size issues. It includes race, ethnicity, and religion. The textual exploration is a lyric because Rankine’s writing takes the form of image or sentiment-based poetry and essay. Rankine’s work explores the question of what it means to be a black American, the meaning and responsibilities of being a part of citizenship, and American society. Rankine sees herself as a citizen walking around collecting stories and using those stories to reflect her life to poetry. There are various paintings, sculptures, images, and screenshots are edited in the book. Based on the content of this book, Claudia Rankine delves deeper into the relationship between humans and animals by a taxidermized deer, instead of the usual deer face on page 126, Kindle Edition. This image uses a human face in a completely strange way. The hair on the animal’s face was shaved without any real human faces in the picture. The image appears after the last act of the first chapter of the poem. In the last act of the first chapter, the speaker felt that she is being rejected when her therapist saw her at the front door. Rankine attempts to describe the existence of some people who are unseen at certain moments in their everyday lives by using the speaker was rejected to enter her therapist’s house as “At the front door the bell is a small round disc that you press firmly. When the door finally opens, the woman standing there yells, at the top of her lungs, Get away from my house! What are you doing in my yard?” (Rankine 117, Kindle Edition) Rankine also relates to blackness at the beginning of the poem by referring as “features more like a white person.” Moreover, in this image, a human character has evolved into a hairless face, revealing a series of generally understood expressions: anger, fear, compassion, and the most subtle emotions. Deer also play some significant roles to various people in the world legends such as the object of heroic pursuits and behavior. Evidently that Rankine tries to use an image to turn her attention by adding stories to help the reader better understand the emotion of writing the text from words and sounds related to the text. Rankine uses a taxidermized deer sculpture image to capture the reader’s thoughts as they read the novel and adds her emotions and images to help them better understand her story. It’s interesting to look at photos as a language in this citizen poem. The point is with a picture, we can convey so much more information than we can with words. In fact, it can take a thousand words just to describe what is in one picture. In this deer-like particular art piece, Rankine uses in Citizen is to attach her memory of being originally an indistinguishable historical animal on this continent. Rankine’s lyrical articles and images explore how racism may affect identity.