The Bluest Eye
$4,000 · Offered by Biblio
First edition
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970. First edition. 164 pp. Publisher's blue quarter cloth over gray paper boards, spine lettered in silver, with the dust jacket. Spine lightly rolled, board edges toned; small nick to top edge of front board. Jacket browned at extremities, as usual; small old crease to rear flap top corner; old price in faded ink below printed $5.95 price; small chip to laminate of top edge of rear panel. Overall nicer than usually seen. Toni Morrison's first novel, written when she could take time early in the mornings before her children awoke. "The novel stemmed from a desire to read a book about how Black girls learned self-loathing, and how the pain of racism became interiorized, without explaining anything to white people; no such book existed, so Morrison wrote it herself. The gut-wrenching novel brings Black girls to center stage, interrogating the normative narrative of the perfect white middle-class family that the character Pecola Breedlove has internalized. Though 'The Bluest Eye' received positive reviews from critics, and Morrison gained recognition as a scholar and critic of the Black experience, the book's sales were modest at the time. Now, 'The Bluest Eye' is an enduring classic that is both taught in schools and frequently targeted by book-banning campaigns" (Bayan Atari, The Dig, Howard University). The innovative jacket design, with the text of the novel beginning on the front cover, (and the tittles of the i's in blue) is by Herb
- Publisher: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
- Year: 1970
- Edition: First Edition
- Binding: unknown
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