Missouri School District Bans Toni Morrison's 'The Bluest Eye'

[RandySF]

A Missouri school district joins a growing list of districts across the country to ban books highlighting issues of race, sexuality, and the Holocaust.

In a 4-3 vote, the Wentzville School Board voted to ban the late Toni Morrison's first published book, "The Bluest Eye," which details the experiences of a young Black girl living in the wake of The Great Depression.

"By all means, go buy the book for your child," Wentzville school board member Sandy Garber said during the meeting, according to original reporting from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "I would not want this book in the school for anyone else to see."

"The Bluest Eye" follows Pecola, who yearns for blue eyes and equates whiteness to beauty while she believes her Blackness automatically makes her ugly. The book touches on many themes, including rape, incest, domestic violence, alcoholism, infant mortality, and racism. It also includes profanity — at one point, a character's mother calls him a "nasty little Black bitch."

Morrison, the award-winning author of the book who died in 2019 at the age of 88, had argued against banning books prior to her passing. In response to past attempts to ban "Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain for its use of the "n-word," Morrison wrote that banning books is the "purist and yet elementary kind of censorship designed to appease adults rather than educate children."





https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/missouri-school-district-bans-toni-morrisons-the-bluest-eye/3522485/?fbclid=IwAR1ffAhJA-hdRUNi_oKBaA7SYisvZ75LLAVqaZIMjtdNc7WD7zkqDW--FX4

[Walleye]

1. Banning Huckleberry Finn is stupid.Is it really because of the N-word?

Or is it because Huck and Jim become so close and Huck learns from Jim what slavery is really about. And it’s not a pretty picture. The use of the N-word is vernacular which Twain explains in the preface. One of the best American books ever written, I find it hard to believe that they are banning it because of a word. I think they are banning it because of the same reasons they are doing it to the other books. They can’t handle the truth

[Prof. Toru Tanaka]

2. Banning Mark Twain....

[ShazzieB]

3. Huckleberry Finn has a l-o-n-g history of being banned.

https://www.marshall.edu/library/bannedbooks/the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn/
https://www.bannedlibrary.com/podcast/2016/6/26/banned-61-the-adventures-of-huckleberry-finn-by-mark-twain

[LoisB]

4. I wonder if any of the 4 have ever read "The Bluest Eye" and how the hell do you ban

anything by Mark Twain? Heaven forbid these people should ever come to my house; they would stroke out just looking at the titles in my library.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

5. Why not completely comply with the intent of their corporate masters and....

just ban the teaching and practice of reading........

An illiterate, stupid populace is the most compliant and servile of all and make prefect employees that companies can train from scratch with only what they need to know.

Me: Where did you go to high school?
Guy: Ford Motors High.
Me: Sorry, I can't use your help in my Chevrolet show room.

Reminds me of the movie Idiocracy..........






KY.....

[Betty88]

6. Think I need to start a reading list.