The Bluest Eye

And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved. We courted death in order to call ourselves brave, and hid like thieves from life. We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new pattern of an old idea the Revelation and the Word.

Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another—physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought.

Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane live in the green-and-white house.

The assertion of racial beauty was not a reaction to the self-mocking, humorous critique of cultural/racial foibles common in all groups, but against the damaging internalization of assumptions of immutable inferiority originating in an outside gaze.

also why she prayed for so radical an alteration.

Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.

She said she wanted blue eyes.

The project, then, for this, my first book, was to enter the life of the one least likely to withstand such damaging forces because of youth, gender, and race.

Others surrender their identity; melt into a structure that delivers the strong persona they lack. Most others, however, grow beyond it.

Instead of ignoring her infirmity, pretending it was not there, he made it seem like something special and endearing.