African-American Beauty

Paper Summary:

The paper portrays how Pecola Breedlove, the fictional young, black girl in Toni Morrison's novel, "The Bluest Eye", grows up in a culture where beauty is equated with whiteness. The paper conveys the American culture that infiltrated the African-American community, where beauty and blackness are mutually exclusive. The paper shows how Pecola hopes that by having blue eyes like a white girl, she at least has a chance to become the image of American joy. The paper discusses Morrison's belief that when mass culture requires virtually impossible body modification, then it is necessary to challenge the assumptions of that culture.

From the Paper:

"Morrison's novel "as a whole" is a documentary of cultural invasion "and its concomitant erasure of specific local bodies, histories, and cultural productions--in terms of sexuality as [well as how] it intersects with commodity culture." (Kuenz, 2006) The traditional community of the novel where Pecola dwells, such as the culture of the prostitutes living nearby who have a fairly secure sense of their positive identity as Black women, has now been eradicated by oppressive, American cultural forces that equate whiteness with beauty, rather than the blackness that women see every day in the mirror."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Bennett, Juda. "Toni Morrison and the Burden of the Passing Narrative." The Bluest Eye. Site created by Anniina Jokinenon May 21, 1997. Last updated on May 31, 2006. [7 Nov 2006]< http://www.geocities.com/tarbaby2007/bluest6.html>
• Kuenz, Jane. "'The Bluest Eye': notes on history, community, and black female subjectivity." The Bluest Eye. Site created by Anniina Jokinenon May 21, 1997. Last updated on May 31, 2006. [7 Nov 2006]<http://www.geocities.com/tarbaby2007/bluest3.html>
• Moses, Cat. "The Blues Aesthetic in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye." AfricanAmerican Review. Winter 1999. [7 Nov 2006] <http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2838/is_4_33/ai_59024884>
• Willis, Joy. "Genealogy of Rejection in Morrison's The Bluest Eye."The Bluest Eye. Site created by Anniina Jokinenon May 21, 1997. Last updated on May 31, 2006. [7 Nov 2006] <http://www.luminarium.org/contemporary/tonimorrison/wills.htm>

More papers on African-American Beauty:

• Comparison Essay # 4229 : "Perpetuating the Stereotype of African-American Women"
• Book Review # 146139 : "African American Christian Worship" : A Book Review"
• Essay # 85544 : " African- American Children's Literature"

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