I've never assigned Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye in my classes, primarily because an author's early work is not always her best. Paradise and Song of Solomon serve my students well, and when my survey students need a small taste of Morrison's magic, I assign the short story "Recitatif." Besides, The Bluest Eye is frequently assigned in high school.
Except when it's banned. I am embarrassed to report that the president of my state school board believes The Bluest Eye ought to be banned from high school reading lists.
In Ohio. Toni Morrison's home state.
The Bluest Eye is set in Lorain, Ohio, but if Debe Terhar has her way, students residing in Lorain will not be allowed to read the book in school. Never mind that Toni Morrison, a native of Lorain, is our nation's only living Nobel-Prize-winning novelist and a writer whose impact on American literature has been incalculable. Terhar doesn't want 11th-graders exposed to anything "inappropriate," and she's perfectly happy to become the final arbiter of literary appropriateness.
I didn't believe it either, but read it for yourself here. And if you figure out what another state school board member means when he says The Bluest Eye promotes a "socialist-communist agenda," please explain.
2 comments:
"They are quite divisive..."
Yeah, it's dog-whistle speech, there. What he means is because this book talks about black people as though they're human beings, and women as though they're human beings, and children as though they're human beings, it might start making people (that is to say white men) nervous.
It might start dividing the supporters of people -- the property of those people (women, and black people, and children) might start thinking they have *rights* and that would be divisive to the power structures of white men, and we call that socialism and communism round these parts, see.
Glad I could clear that up for you.
And it's such a great book!
Post a Comment