Recommendations
Books Like The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
Pecola's prayer for blue eyes in 1940s Ohio
If Morrison's anatomy of internalized racism, the Dick-and-Jane formal device, and Pecola's destruction in Lorain, Ohio stayed with you, here are eight books that extend these concerns.
- 1
Buy on AmazonSula
by Toni Morrison
Morrison's second novel — the immediate companion; Nel and Sula in the Bottom of Medallion, Ohio, more compressed and formally controlled than The Bluest Eye but in the same African-American community terrain.
- 2
Buy on AmazonTheir Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
Hurston's Harlem Renaissance novel — the predecessor in centering a Black woman's inner life; Janie's self-discovery is the affirmative counterpart to Pecola's destruction, the tradition Morrison is writing from.
- 3
Buy on AmazonBeloved
by Toni Morrison
Morrison's Pulitzer Prize-winner — the slavery trauma that Lorain, Ohio's Black community is only one generation away from; the mature achievement that The Bluest Eye points toward.
- 4
Buy on AmazonPassing
by Nella Larsen
Larsen's 1929 novella — the Harlem Renaissance predecessor in African-American women's fiction of a Black woman's identity under the pressure of white cultural norms; Irene's ambivalence is the complement to Pecola's destruction.
- 5
Buy on AmazonI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
by Maya Angelou
Angelou's memoir published a year before The Bluest Eye — the same African-American girl's experience of American racism and beauty standards, in autobiography rather than fiction.
- 6
Buy on AmazonThe Color Purple
by Alice Walker
Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winner — the companion in Black feminist fiction; where The Bluest Eye ends in Pecola's destruction, The Color Purple moves Celie toward voice and self-recovery.
- 7
Buy on AmazonInvisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
Ellison's 1952 masterpiece — the male experience of being unseen by a culture that defines your worth; the companion to The Bluest Eye in its anatomy of what American racism does to the person it targets.
- 8
Buy on AmazonSong of Solomon
by Toni Morrison
Morrison's National Book Critics Circle-winning novel — the multigenerational companion that offers what The Bluest Eye cannot: ancestry, community, and a different kind of answer to the question of Black identity.
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