Morrison, Toni
Description
Review “So precise, so faithful to speech and so charged with pain and wonder that the novel becomes poetry.” —The New York Times“A profoundly success
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ful work of fiction. . . . Taut and understated, harsh in its detachment, sympathetic in its truth...it is an experience.” —The Detroit Free Press“This story commands attention, for it contains one black girl’s universe.” —NewsweekFrom the Trade Paperback edition. Product Description 2 cassettes / 3 hours Read by Toni Morrison and Ruby Dee Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, The Bluest Eye (1970) is the first novel written by Toni Morrison. It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment. From the Inside Flap / 3 hours
Read by Toni Morrison and Ruby Dee
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, The Bluest Eye (1970) is the first novel written by Toni Morrison. It is the story of eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove--a black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others--who prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning and the tragedy of its fulfillment. About the Author Toni Morrison is also the author of Sula, Paradise, Song of Solomon, Tar Baby, Beloved (awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1988), and Jazz. She has worked in publishing and has taught at various universities. Morrison is currently the Robert F. Goheen Professor at Princeton. Along with the Nobel Prize she received in 1993, Toni Morrison was also awarded the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 1996. Ruby Dee's distinguished career includes roles in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing and Jungle Fever. Dee was also honered with an Obie Award for her role as Lena in Athol Fugard's Boesman and Lena. She has appeared in several television series, including "Roots," and won an Emmy for "Decoration Day." Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Nuns go by as quiet as lust, and drunken men and sober eyes sing in the lobby of the Greek hotel. Rosemary Villanucci, our next-door friend who lives above her father's cafe, sits in a 1939 Buick eating bread and butter. She rolls down the window to tell my sister Frieda and me that we can't come in. We stare at her, wanting her bread, but more than that wanting to poke the arrogance out of her eyes and smash the pride of ownership that curls her chewing mouth. When she comes out of the car we will beat her up, make red marks on her white skin, and she will cry and ask us do we want her to pull her pants down. We will say no. We don't know what we should feel or do if she does, but whenever she asks us, we know she is offering us something precious and that our own pride must be asserted by refusing to accept.School has started, and Frieda and I get new brown stockings and cod-liver oil. Grown-ups talk in tired, edgy voices about Zick's Coal Company and take us along in the evening to the railroad tracks where we fill burlap sacks with the tiny pieces of coal lying about. Later we walk home, glancing back to see the great carloads of slag being dumped, red hot and smoking, into the ravine that skirts the steel mill. The dying fire lights the sky with a dull orange glow. Frieda and I lag behind, staring at the patch of color surrounded by black. It is impossible not to feel a shiver when our feet leave the gravel path and sink into the dead grass in the field.Our house is old, cold, and green. At night a kerosene lamp lights one large r
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