Banned Book Pick: The Bluest Eye

Nobel Prize winning author Toni Morrison’s first novel, The Bluest Eye, stands out as one of my favorite banned books. The novel examines the consequences of social beauty norms enforced by an “outside gaze” that leads people to believe they lack beauty. Specifically, the story follows a young black girl named Pecola who adores Shirley Temple and thinks that blue eyes would make her lovable. In the afterword, Morrison says that her inspiration for the novel came from a conversation with an African-American elementary school girl who longed for blue eyes.
 
Though published in 1970, the novel broke the top five most banned books as recently as 2006.