Toni Morrison - One of the Finest Contemporary Female Afro-American Writers - Essay Example

174987 Conduct a specialized research on Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye. Write a research paper covering four major categories: Introduction; Biography; Background and Review; and Personal Evaluation. Single space plus a Works Cited page at the end of paper. 1) Introduction: (2 paragraphs minimum) Who and what is this research paper going to be about? State the complete title of the work and explain why you chose to discuss this author and her book. What do you hope to learn? 2) Biography: 1 page minimum (use at least 2 professional research source to quote or paraphrase) 3) Background and Review of the work: 1.5 page minimum (use 3 different research sources to quote or paraphrase) 1. Find one popular newspaper or magazine review/article 2. Find one academic journal article. Write an overview of the information you found. Explain what type of response the work received at the time it was published (from the newspaper/magazine). Then, show what professional scholars have decided to focus on (academic journal article) by summarizing and quoting from these sources. 4) Personal Evaluation: 1 page minimum. What did you enjoy the most about this novel and this authors writing? Why? What is your favorite scene or passage? What did you find weak about this novel? 5) Work Cited Page: (MLA Format) At present Toni Morrison is widely regarded as one of the finest contemporary female Afro-American writers around. As the following will show Toni Morrison has certainly had a very successful career as an outstanding writer, and also as an accomplished academic. Her written works commencing with the Bluest Eye have arguably demonstrated her well developed skills as a writer, yet her works have gone beyond just being readable, her written works have powerful social and even political meanings. The objective of the Bluest Eye is to inform its readers about the injustices towards Afro-Americans in contemporary American society by telling a story that showed the failures, the racism, and the widespread social prejudices towards Afro-Americans within the United States that were prevalent in the past. One of Toni Morrison’s strong points is the way in which she can portray complex social and political issues by presenting differing perspectives in apparently trivial or mundane ways. An apparently trivial or mundane event or action can inadvertently highlight more serious issues, as will be argued below this is one of the favorite literary techniques employed by Toni Morrison in the Bluest Eye. The apparently innocent desire of a young Afro-American girl to be able to change her brown eyes into blue eyes has some wide-ranging implications when evaluated in greater detail.1 Toni Morrison’s the Blues Eye was chosen due to the style perspectives, and the messages contained within the story. As a novel, The Bluest Eye presents perspectives that the vast majority of popular American fiction and literature had previously ignored, the lives, the experiences, and the emotions of Afro- American women. It is the covert meanings and the underlying perspectives contained within the Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, which makes it a very interesting literary work to examine and to understand. It is a novel that is an ample demonstration of the literary skills and techniques of this very talented writer and academic. In evaluating the meanings, the techniques, and the perspectives used and presented in the Bluest Eye it is very useful to describe the life, the background and the considerable achievements of Toni Morrison both before and after the completion of this now seminal book. Toni Morrison was born during 1931in Ohio, the second eldest of four children in an Afro-American working-class family that like many other families in the Great Depression found life tough going. However, the child hood experiences of Toni Morrison would prove influential in her subsequent literary career.2 Although the young Toni Morrison was part of a family that did not particularly have a great deal of money, her parents were content to encourage her to read as many books as she wanted to. Toni Morrison was at an early age an avid reader of the fictional works of Jane Austin and Leo Tolstoy. Arguably the admiration of Jane Austin would influence the way in which Toni Morrison sets out her novels including The Bluest Eye as works of historical fiction. The other main ingredient for the Bluest Eye and Toni Morrison’s subsequent novels was gained from her own father, who had told her and her three siblings traditional Afro-American folktales that gave her works their particular social and historical perspectives.3 It is highly significant for the style, content, and the perspectives set out in the Bluest Eye as it demonstrated that Toni Morrison was fully aware of the importance of traditional folktales in preserving Afro-American culture. Whilst such folklore allowed Afro-Americans to resist or at least endure the overt racism and covert prejudices in a white dominated American society.4 Toni Morrison was academically gifted at school and was able to gain a place at Harvard University. It was when she was studying at Harvard that Toni Morrison got involved with groups that were interested in the promotion of Afro- American human and civil rights as well as defending their cultural identities and separate literatures. At Harvard University, Toni Morrison was already showing how impressive her literary skills are, whilst her involvement with the Afro- American groups would provide the stimulus for all of Toni Morrison’s future books. The motivation for Toni Morrison was to write books that allowed people to understand the lives, the feelings, as well as the sufferings of Afro- American people in a society that had little or no respect for them, their feelings, or indeed for their distinctive culture.5 One feature of the novel was the way in which Toni Morrison explores the racism not only from the majority white population towards all Afro-Americans yet also the racial tensions between different groups within the Afro-American communities towards each other. Specifically she mentions that colored people regarded themselves as being superior to black people even if they were not treated as equals by white people.6 The style in which Toni Morrison writes is a very vivid and vibrant one, it succeeds in making the reader feel that they saw the events for themselves. 7 The newspaper review of The Bluest Eye chose to be evaluated is the one that appeared in the New York Times of 1970. The review is generally full of praise for The Bluest Eye and the writing style and the social perspectives of Toni Morrison. The review praises Morrison for the way in which she discusses the issues surrounding racism, cultural identities, and the pressures upon Afro-Americans to behave and think like white people to avoid racism. The review argues that The Bluest Eye is a better book as Toni Morrison made it a highly readable and realistic portrayal of how Afro-American lived, acted and reacted to social expectations and prejudices. The over all impression of the book presented by the review is that it is a highly impressive piece of literature that is well written and has several important social messages that they convey with great aplomb throughout the book. The book has the benefit of allowing white people to understand how Afro-American people felt and reacted to living in a society that overtly and covertly discriminated against them and their cultures.8 The journal article concerning Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye was if anything even more impressed than the newspaper review had been. The article chosen is The Bluest Eye: notes on history, community, and black female subjectivity by Jane Kuenz. In the article, Kueunz praises Toni Morrison for using her book to raise awareness of the subjective experiences and opinions of Afro-American women which had up to that point of time been largely ignored. Toni Morrison is commended for attempting to reverse the trend ‘to the more general annihilation of popular forms and images by an ever more all-pervasive and insidious mass culture industry’. The Bluest Eye is regarded as a vibrant example of what Afro-American women could offer to enrich the culture of American society as a whole. Morrison rightly pointed out that ‘one function of the mass deployment of these stories was in fact to raise hopes for a better future in order to counteract the oppressiveness of the present, …in the process, to delimit the chance of dissatisfaction’.9 Kueunz is not completely uncritical of Toni Morrison, as in her opinion The Bluest Eye did not go far enough in questioning the pressure upon Afro-American women to live like their white counterparts.10 Personally, over all the style, and the ways in which Toni Morrison wrote her perspectives, and the specific messages contained within the story are all done with great authority. As a novel The Bluest Eye achieved its objectives of presenting perspectives that the great majority of popular American fiction writers, the reading public and literary critics could no longer ignore, the lives, and the emotional experiences of Afro- American women. The book is very readable and yet at the same time is an accurate portrayal of the lives, sufferings, and opinions of Afro-American women. The story has a great deal of things to offer to anybody that chose to read it. Bibliography Dreifus, Claudia. "CHLOE WOFFORD Talks about TONI MORRISON", The New York Times, September 11, 1994. Larson, Susan "Awaiting Toni Morrison", The Times-Picayune, April 11, 2007 Interview with Claudia Tate, Black Women Writers at Work. New York: Continuum, 1983. 117-31 T Morrison, The Bluest Eye, 1970 www.newyorktimes.com The Bluest Eye: notes on history, community, and black female subjectivity by Jane Kuenz Read More