Toni Morrison is an American novelist born in 1931 in Ohio. She received degrees from Howard University and Cornell University and has taught at several universities. Morrison has written ten novels, including The Bluest Eye (1970), Sula (1973), Song of Solomon (1977), and Beloved (1987) for which she won the Pulitzer Prize. She was the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Bluest Eye examines the experiences of black children in Ohio following the Great Depression and deals with themes of beauty, self-perception, and minority status in society.

1. Toni Morrison

2. Life
• Born 1931, Chloe Ardelia Wofford, in Ohio.
• Received BA from Howard University (1953),
MA Cornell University (1955).
• Has taught at many different institutions,
including Howard, Yale, Barnard, Bard, SUNY,
and Princeton.
• Winner of Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, American
Book Award, Nobel Prize, and many other
awards and honors.

3. Work
Morrison has written ten novels:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
The Bluest Eye (1970)
Sula (1973)
Song of Solomon (1977)
Tar Baby (1981)
Beloved (1987)
Jazz (1992)
Paradise (1997)
Love (2003)
A Mercy (2008)
Home (2012)
As well as children’s stories, plays, an opera libretto, and non-fiction. She was also
nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Spoken World Album for Children in
2008.

4. The Bluest Eye
• This story is a selected section of the novel The Bluest
Eye, Morrison’s first novel, published in 1970.
• Bildungsroman centering on two black families in Ohio
during the era immediately following the Great
Depression. The focus is on young children, Frieda,
Claudia, and Pecola and their experiences and
education (Klotman 123).
• Makes use of a variety of narrative viewpoints (first
person as well as third-person omniscient narrator).

5. Major Themes
• Images of beauty, self-perception, selfhate, projection.
• Search for understanding of hegemonic
imagery of beauty
• Education, learning, change.
• Minority status in society and how this affects
goals, desires, etc.

6. Media
• Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and Shirley Temple:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjCFYpW
DmfM
• Short Biography of Toni Morrison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxVUB4g
2IUI

7. Questions for Discussion
• Discuss the notion of “Outdoors.” How does this
notion of exclusion and failure inform our
understanding of the short story?
• What are the narrator’s feelings toward Shirley
Temple? How do they relate to her feelings toward
white dolls? How will these feelings eventually change?
What is “truly horrifying” about these feelings?
• How do Claudia’s own desires for “experience” differ
from the feelings of others around her and their
“hunger for property, for ownership?”