A Reading from "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison for Banned Books Week 2022
Channel: Ayman Fadel
Date: 2022-09-23

For more information on Banned Books Week, visit https://bannedbooksweek.org/.

American Library Association, Officer for Intellection Freedom

While “diversity” is seldom given as a reason for a challenge, it may in fact be an underlying and unspoken factor: the work is about people and issues others would prefer not to consider. Often, content addresses concerns of groups who have suffered historic and ongoing discrimination. For instance, a book that often recurs in previous years’ top ten challenges is Toni Morrison’s Beloved. While it has sex in it, and that's often the complaint, many other books also have sex, and are not challenged. Is the underlying motivation for the challenge racism? Sometimes, it surely is. In other cases, of course, a complaint genuinely may be about precisely what the challenger says it is.

from https://www.ala.org/advocacy/bbooks/diversity

Toni Morrison's 1970 novel "The Bluest Eye" has been challenged many times, including Columbia County, Georgia, where I live, in 2022. 

This narration comes at the end of a longer passage. You can download and listen to the longer excerpt here: https://app.box.com/s/x2q6xqsseqxu3cc8w1c9dfr9u3ease28

Images in order of appearance

Toni Morrison Lecture_013 (March 28, 2013) by Mike Strasser (United States Military Academy PAO)
https://flic.kr/p/e6Fow2
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Noted psychologists Kenneth Clark and Mamie Phipps Clark: 1945 ca.
Washington Area Spark
https://flic.kr/p/Gwjt4S
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

Kenneth and Mamie Clark Doll
National Park Service Photo by Visual Information Specialist Preston Webb
Part of the Brown v. Board of Education National Historic Park, Topeka, Kansas

https://www.nps.gov/brvb/learn/historyculture/clarkdoll.htm

Alexandria King, Hadar Busia-Singleton, McKenzie Frye, and Brittany-Laurelle
Photo: T Charles Erickson

From the 2022 stage production "The Bluest Eye" by Lydia R. Diamond and Directed by Awoye Timpo, January 28 - March 26, 2022, The Huntington Calderwood/BCA, Boston, MA https://www.huntingtontheatre.org/

https://flic.kr/p/2n17J9T
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Stephanie Gainer Arts, https://www.facebook.com/sgainerfb

Covers of various editions of translations of "The Bluest Eye."
 
29.GraffitiAlley.BaltimoreMD.8August2019 by Elvert Barnes
https://flic.kr/p/2gT3aFw
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Reading by Ayman Fadel (http://twitter.com/aymanfadel)