Phillips Book Club: The Bluest Eye

Join The Phillips Collection Staff for our first virtual book club. This month we will be reading Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the New York Times Bestseller by the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize in Literature winning author. We will examine how the themes in the book relate to Riffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition.

Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty. Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in. Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife. A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison’s virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing.

The Bluest Eye is available through Audible, Kindle, Apple books, and Google books.