The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye is a 1970 novel by American author Toni Morrison. It is Morrison's first novel and was written while Morrison was teaching at Howard University and raising her two sons on her own. The story is about a year in the life of a young black girl, named Pecola, who develops an inferiority complex due to her eye and skin appearance in Lorain, Ohio, against the backdrop of America's Midwest as well as in the years following the Great Depression. It is told from the perspective of Claudia MacTeer as a child and an adult, as well as from a third-person, omniscient viewpoint. Because of the controversial nature of the book, which deals with racism, incest, and child molestation, there have been numerous attempts to ban it from schools and libraries.