-Pecola, from the novel
Our Page Turners group selected this novel as our representative banned book for this year. I believe I tried to read one of Morrison's books years ago and gave up on it. I didn't find this one extremely compelling either. I found it rather strange, but I am glad I read it.
The story is set in 1941 in Lorain, Ohio. Pecola Breedlove is a young black girl with low self-esteem---convinced she is ugly because of her dark skin---and wishes for blue eyes. She has internalized the idea that "white is beautiful." This is one aspect of racism portrayed in the book. Others are the treatment of the black children and their parents by white folks in the town. Interestingly, chapters are begun with excerpts of the Dick and Jane readers of the time period, which portray a lily-white world. I enjoyed the parts of the book narrated by Claudia MacTeer, the nine-year-old daughter of Pecola's foster parents and a friend to her.
I had wondered why this book had been banned in some places and I guess I now know the answer. Not only is the racism ugly but there is domestic and child abuse and even incest involved in the story. Not sure of the need to ban such thoughts since they were at the that time, and still are a part of the real world. These things are not easy or fun to read about but they make the reader think! I am rating the book a 3. We will soon see what the group thinks...
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Page Turners' opinions ran the gamut in ratings, from 1-5. The average was 3.5 with many enjoying the excellent writing and feeling the importance of the theme at the time it was published. We very much wished we had a person of color in our group to share how they or others they know have experience racism. Most of us admitted we have been privileged to live as white people and could not really walk in the shoes of others such as blacks, Jews, Muslims, Indigenous people.
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