I prefer fiction books over non-fiction, and I always have. When I was young, my father introduced me and my brother to reading. He encouraged us to spend our summer days pouring over books in the comfort of our beds, our living rooms and the libraries my mother would take us to. In that time, I developed a love for the written word and what it could give me. While reading books, I found that I experienced love, joy and overwhelming sadness without moving a muscle. It wasn’t abnormal for me to sit on the couch, bawling as I turned the last few pages of whatever novel I was finishing at the time.
While fiction books taught me to reach new depths in my own emotions, I did not necessarily think they covered the hard-hitting lessons of life. I learned from them, sure. Catcher in the Rye, Jane Eyre even Twilight left me feeling like I had gained something from the folds of their pages. But, the older I got, the more I felt that I was lacking the kind of insight a non-fiction book would provide me. That was until I read Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. The book was fiction, but it’s nuanced points and lessons about race and being a Black girl in America gave me a better perspective and understanding of my life than any history lesson taught in school ever had.
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is about a young Black girl who yearns to feel beautiful and loved by her peers. She covets the blonde-haired, blue-eyed appearance that she thinks is crucial to being accepted by society. As the young girl continues to wish for beauty, her life takes several heart-wrenching turns that speak to the truth about how race, gender and class can impact the life of an innocent.
Colorism, as told by Morrison, was something I had never thought about in my own life. In her novel, she introduces a girl named Maureen Peel as “a high-yellow dream child with long brown hair braided into two lynch ropes that hung down her back.” The book goes on to explain how the main characters were “bemused, irritated and fascinated by her.”Because of her lighter complexion, Peel made friends easier and was adored by more of society than her darker peers. Being biracial, I had never thought about how my skin tone was thought of by others, only how I thought of it. To me, being biracial always meant that I didn’t belong anywhere. My father always emphasized that we were Black and that we belonged to the Black community, but my skin tone and growing up away from my Black side of the family made me feel like an outlier. I always felt that I was in some gray zone that encapsulated only me and my siblings. Reading Morrison’s book, I realized that my lighter skin tone had made me slightly more “appealing” to the mainstream standards of beauty than my darker-skinned family and friends. This was a kind of privilege I had not accounted for before. Morrison’s novel reminded me that the same genes that tanned my skin and curled my hair run through the darker complexions of the Black community. No matter what biases society may cast on me, their struggle is still my struggle.
Despite my privilege of having a lighter skin tone, I still struggled to accept and love the features of myself that were Black. I hated my frizzy, curly hair as a child and I felt displaced in a crowd of white kids when my skin was obviously shades darker. Whether or not they thought of me as different I cannot say. They never voiced their thoughts on the matter. Their silence on the subject didn’t quiet the voice in my head that was constantly reminding me that I stood out. My hazel eyes weren’t blue, my skin wasn’t ivory and my hair could never be put in the same fashionable hairstyles as the other kids. Instead, my locks were booked and jailed into unflattering braids that gave me a headache.
For most of my life, I attributed this inner self-loathing to the same insecurities every adolescent must endure. Now that I am older, I know that some of that was insecurity, but there was also the immense pressure of society telling me that I was not on the same caliber of beautiful as the singers, movie stars and models. I was not represented in the beauty around me, and I internalized that. In The Bluest Eye, Morrison talks about the “magic” that white girls weaved on those around them. While I couldn’t say what I coveted about the white girls in my classes at the time, I now think it was their security in the fact that they belonged in a society where they were wanted and valued. Morrison’s articulation of this salient feeling in Black girls gave me the ability to label the feelings I had as a young child.
Throughout Morrison’s novel, the children who are followed throughout the story are never sheltered from the realities of life. They understand how being a Black girl in society shapes their experiences and comprehend the tension that exists within them from day to day. Unlike the parents in the novel, my parents tried to shelter me and my siblings from the harshness of reality. We were left out of the family drama and whispered conversations were always kept out of earshot. My dad was a firm believer that children could thrive without “noise” in their life. By “noise” he meant those unspoken questions that no child should have, yet far too many do: Will there be food on the table tonight? Will mom and dad be fighting? Are the lights going to be on for me to do my homework? My parents did manage to eliminate most of the noise from our lives. My family was comfortable, loving and stable. I was blessed with an amazing childhood. One thing that was never a matter to be sheltered from was our race. My dad told us from the moment that we could understand that we were Black. No questions about it. He grilled us on our family history, what members had migrated from where and what properties were to stay in the family to pass down from generation to generation. He taught us about slavery, about race and about how other people may perceive us. Our race was something to be cherished and celebrated, but as Morrison illustrates in her book, it was something we were constantly made aware of.
Reading Morrison’s book opened my eyes to how much fiction can mimic reality. The three young girls depicted throughout the novel each encompassed lessons that allowed me to reflect and evaluate my own childhood growing up as a Black girl. These lessons gave me a better understanding of myself, my race and the society in which we live in. I look forward to reading the other books Morrison has authored. I am certain their value is beyond measure.