Claudia Rankine does this unique way of interacting with her readers. Claudia Rankine interacts with her readers by providing videos that go with these different situations. Claudia Rankine combine still and moving images from documented, and televised surveillance. This is a way in which Claudia Rankine interacted with her readers because it demonstrated clear acts of racism that are constructed into our everyday life. It shows the acts of what people went through and are based on individual experience. This not only shows how these situations reflects on how people are but also as citizens. Rankine talks about the ongoing situations of modern racism that is face daily. 

Reading the text and viewing it as a film is very different. For example while reading about the situation of February 26, 2012 / In Memory of Trayvon Martin, you rapidly read through it. You feel the pain on how frustrating this was. However seeing it in a film is very much different. Hearing Rankine read the text while the video is playing feels different. The reader gets into it and it really makes the reader feel every pain of it. Adding the still pictures such as black face is very underwhelming as one can’t believe how much damage people do to one another.

This particular film does this thing in which it showcases the first scenes to be filtered with very warm colors, like colors that represent calmness. It then slowly transitions itself to a more blue filter and it makes you feel sad. Rankine choose this type of interaction with the readers because it makes the reader feel the emotions that is coming with this text. For example in this situation the beginning of the text opens up by saying “My brothers are notorious. They have not been to prison. They have been imprisoned. The prison is not a place you enter. It is no place. My brothers are notorious”(Rankine, Claudia. Citizen. Graywolf Press. Kindle Edition). Rankie starts off by talking about her brothers, she mentions how they are like everyone else they are regular people too. Her brothers don’t belong in prison, her brothers are fighting through life. In this scene in the film the lights are in the warmer yellows/oranges. When it starts to get more in the bluer side Rankine mentions words like raining, break, and good bye. “…Down. It was raining. It stopped raining. It is raining down. He won’t hang up. He’s there, he’s there but he’s hung up though he is there. Good-bye, I say. I break the good-bye”(Rankine, Claudia. Citizen . Graywolf Press. Kindle Edition.). All these words symbolizes sadness. The rain is always so gloomy, and goodbyes are always sad. Both rain and goodbyes go with the color blue, since sadness always is describe to be so blue. This made the text be read with more emotions and it made the text be more visual as you can see the feelings in which the text is going through.

Research question: how does Toni Morrison represents tensions within the black community in TBE?

• 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, jstor.org/stable/43496824. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

In this article ,the author argues that adolescents are encountering many difficulties on their path to adulthood. He examines how race, gender, and class status affect the young black female. This is relevant to my argument because it discusses how the issues of race that Pecola experiences takes place within the black community starting with her family. It is important because it shows that black communities play a vital role on destroying adolescents’ lives.

• Roye, Susmita. “TONI MORRISON’S DISRUPTED GIRLS AND THEIR DISTURBED GIRLHOODS: ‘The Bluest Eye’ and ‘A Mercy.’” Callaloo, vol. 35, no. 1, 2012, pp. 212–227., www.jstor.org/stable/41412505. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

Susmita argues that TBE concerns itself with the world of black girls like Pecola, Claudia and Freida. This relates to my argument because it discusses how violence and hatred of Breedlove family destroyed Pecola. Also, the article describes that Pecola is disowned by other members of her black community. This is important because it shows that racism exists within the black community and that it affects young girls which leads to self-hatred and deepens the feeling of ugliness.

• Hyman, Ramona L. “PECOLA BREEDLOVE: THE SACRIFICIAL ICONOCLAST IN ‘THE BLUEST EYE.’” CLA Journal, vol. 52, no. 3, 2009, pp. 256–264. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/44325476. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

Romana argues how African American children are taught the social and the cultural advantage of whiteness .This is relevant to my argument because it discusses the community that births, nurtures, educates, physically dismantles, rebirths Pecola. This is important because it supports my argument of how tensions represented in Morrison’s novel. And this article is an evidence that black community affects the way Pecola think of whiteness.

• 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, www.jstor.org/stable/42980110. Accessed 15 Nov. 2020.

Wllowitz argues that it was Morrison’s intent to involve the community in and outside the text in their own interrogation for the “smashing” of Pecola and for contributing “to her collapse”.  It is important for my research because it examines the roots and effects of self-loathing. The author is wondering how the white- controlled media affects the identity formation of adolescent black youth. This is exactly what I am looking for.

• iwari, Neelu. “Decoding the Metaphor of Doll within the Larger Metaphor of White Beauty And Black Ugliness in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGLISH: LITERATURE, LANGUAGE & SKILLS

The author argues that a class-conflict exists within the African-American community and that its people are doubly marginalized. This is very important because it discussed discrimination within black community, this discrimination was the cause of destroying Pecola’s life. Also, the author discusses how the community rejects the beauty of its own children and encourages them to adopt the idea that beauty means whiteness.

• Mohaisen, Ahmed Ghazi. “Pecola as devastated and secluded character in Toni Morrison’s novel” The Bluest Eye”.” Journal of The Iraqi University 44.1 (2019): 522-529.

Ghazi argues that white beauty standards affect the black community especially black women who seek for beauty to be accepted by their community. This article is important for me because it discusses the absence of solidarity within the black community and how the internalized racial prejudice affects black people all over the world.

My Question: How do the beauty standards of the 1930s and 40s affect the young female characters in the bluest eye?

Bibliography: 

Roye, Susmita. “TONI MORRISON’S DISRUPTED GIRLS AND THEIR DISTURBED GIRLHOODS: ‘The Bluest Eye’ and ‘A Mercy.’” Callaloo, vol. 35, no. 1, 2012, pp. 212–227., www.jstor.org/stable/41412505. Accessed 23 Nov. 2020.

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.

“‘Everyone Admires the Woman Who Has Beautiful Hair’: Mediating African American Beauty Standards in the 1920s and 1930s.” Style and Status: Selling Beauty to African American Women, 1920-1975, by Susannah Walker, University Press of Kentucky, 2007, pp. 47–84. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2jcm09.7. Accessed 23 Nov. 2020.

Sugiharti, E. (n.d.). Racialised beauty: Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye.https://www.erhsnyc.org/ourpages/auto/2012/5/10/49279726/Radicalised%20Beauty.pdf

Klotman, Phyllis R. “Dick-and-Jane and the Shirley Temple Sensibility in the Bluest Eye.” Black American Literature Forum, vol. 13, no. 4, 1979, pp. 123–125. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3041475. Accessed 23 Nov. 2020.

After introducing her by the host, Rankine started her meeting by reading a section from “Just Us” called “ethical loneliness” and she defined it. She said that it means “the isolation one feels when one as a violated person or as one member of a persecuted group has been abandoned by humanity or those who have power over one’s life possibilities”. After that, the conversation was open to the general audience for Q&A. One of the questions was if she thought of the audience when she was writing her book. She replied “this question keeps coming out and I think it surprises me a little bit, I feel like every book is for everybody if they’re into it. You don’t know who will find their way into a book. So, I don’t I’m writing for anybody, in particular, I’m writing to the person who is interested in this book and they will only know it if they keep reading past the first five pages. I think because it studies whiteness, people think oh this book is for white people. But that’s not true, the book is about the culture of whiteness which all of us are subject to. In order to look at the culture of whiteness, which everybody including white people is controlled by. I want to talk to some people, but I also talk to black people in the book, I also talk to Asian people, so everybody is there not just white people”. I think her answer was very smart and I agree with her because a book can be read by anyone interested in it. Another question that got stuck on my head was about how Rankine reconcile with white friends, and how she reconciles her personal friendship with their inability to understand racism structurally rather than as a character form. Rankine answered “that she thinks that people are complex and that friendships are complex. She thinks that if you value people in your life no matter who they are, as long as they’re not being disrespectful to you, I think you can have those conversations. I think that the ability to have those conversations is the first indication that the negotiation and management of these issues can happen. If I can have a conversation then I can manage the differences, I’m not trying to make people into me, I’m just trying to be able to have a process with them that allows me to be me and to broaden the knowing of what is between us ”. Her answer is like a lesson to me that I will always remember. It was an honor to attend this event because I learned a lot about Rankine as an author and as a person.

Claudia Rankine transcends her writing from just text with visual additions to her “situations”. What the videos do for these situations that Rankine is describing, is put us in the world that she is talking about, as if we are there experiencing these situations for ourselves. What these situations essentially seem to be are events that Rankine has chosen to put a spotlight on that can be connected to the overall theme of the modern racism and discrimination that black Americans face. These events are instances where Rankine can shine light on the reader’s previous perception of it and show it through the lens of the victims.

In the first situation of the text, (but the third of the videos), Rankine chooses to write about Hurricane Katrina. What drew me in about the text was how little I was when this hurricane actually happened, this made many of the alarming things Rankine talked about in the text completely new to me. She uses CNN’s coverage of the hurricane to give a sense of the confusion, the outrage, and the heartache that was being experienced as essentially thousands of people, a majority black and poor, were left with little emergency aid. Her decision to use words from a CNN coverage is interesting because she essentially creates a textual montage of the event as it happened. It also shows how these televised figures were aware of the blatant indifference of the federal government to those that were stranded as they speculate about how FEMA thought going to them “wasn’t safe”. It also shows the victims of the hurricane in their own words as they say that they were forgotten about.

The addition of the video to this text was a completely moving experience for me. The video is a montage like too, it layers a weather graphic of the hurricane with images of the hurricane victims. I think the video adds to the ideas that Rankine expresses in the text and it opened up my eyes to the line of thinking that Rankine goes through in the text. It starts with just the weather graphic of the hurricane as it going over New Orleans. This drew the question: what is the use of these weather graphics? Usually they are to predict the hurricane and its route and although it’s unclear of this graphic is before or as the hurricane was hitting, I think just the fact that these graphics are used for that already says something. It said to me the symbolism for it in the video could be that the hurricane, to some extent, was predictable in where it would land. I looked into this and actually found an article that solidified this idea, which talks about top weather agencies predicting, rather accurately, the potential catastrophic hurricane and its path that devastated New Orleans even though the federal government stated otherwise.

After coming to terms with that being the reason why the video chooses a weather graphic, the second element of it is the pictures of the devastation. Now that Rankine and Lucas tell us that this is something predictable, and the lack of emergency personnel preventable, they show us the people that Rankine is talking about. The countless photos of black Americans that were left stranded, walking through waist level waters, or on top of their roofs, waiting for some form of help. Looking at those photos, it’s hard to feel like you can imagine these photos taking place in a more white, and/or, rich neighborhood. This is where the video ties in the same conclusion that is Rankine’s text. She repeats multiple times the phrase “I don’t know what the water wanted”. The first time answering it with: “It wanted to show you no one would come”. I think that beautifully summarizes the message of this heart wrenching situation; it shows a federal government’s indifference to a poor, black neighborhood in an extreme time of need. It leaves you with, what I think is a main message of Citizen overall, which is the harsh reality of our modern, systematically racist society.