Lattes & Lit Book Club Discussion of "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison

This month the Lattes & Lit Book Club will read and discuss the 3rd most banned book in the United States in 2022: The Bluest Eye by Nobel Prize-winning author, Toni Morrison. 

In Morrison’s acclaimed first novel, Pecola Breedlove—an 11-year-old Black girl in an America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others—prays for her eyes to turn blue: so that she will be beautiful, so that people will look at her, so that her world will be different. This is the story of the nightmare at the heart of her yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment. The novel is a powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity that asks questions about race, class, and gender with characteristic subtly and grace.

This discussion will be facilitated by Georgetown Professor Angelyn Mitchell, a leading scholar of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison's work. Dr. Mitchell has lectured nationally and internationally on Morrison's works and has conducted seminars for audiences ranging from high school teachers to international scholars on Morrison's works. She is a founding member and past officer of the Toni Morrison Society, and she currently serves as a member of the Toni Morrison Society's Board of Directors.

Learn more about challenges to books in libraries and schools:

• ALA’s Book Ban Data
• Talking Points from Unite Against Book Bans
• Pen America’s Banned in the USA: The Mounting Pressure to Censor