'Black and' Cause I'm Black I'm Blue: Transverse racial geographies in Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye

The aim of this article is to address how Toni Morrison's first novel, The Bluest Eye, points to different experiences of geographical scales and space that simultaneously complicate and reiterate the meaning of being black. Places, bodies and minds, as they intertwine, fluctuate, and ostensibl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inGender, place and culture : a journal of feminist geography Vol. 7; no. 2; pp. 125 - 142
Main Author McKittrick, Katherine
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Abingdon Taylor & Francis Group 01.06.2000
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Subjects
Black people
Blacks
Ethnic Identity
Feminism
Feminist Theory
Gender
Geography
Human Body
Human geography
Literary criticism
Literature
Meaning
Mind
Morrison, Toni (1931-2019)
Novels
Race
Race relations
Racism
Sex
Social Constructionism
Space
Subjectivity
Whites
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Summary:The aim of this article is to address how Toni Morrison's first novel, The Bluest Eye, points to different experiences of geographical scales and space that simultaneously complicate and reiterate the meaning of being black. Places, bodies and minds, as they intertwine, fluctuate, and ostensibly stay the same, play off each other in complicated ways in Morrison's novel. Drawing on anti-racist theory and from anti-racist and feminist geographies, this article examines Morrison's novel and characters in order to bring forth the links between the interrelated categories of race, racism, gender and place. It illustrates how material realities, corporeal differences and subjective understandings of place, race and racism are mutually constructed. It addresses how the meaning of being black in a white-dominated society, in The Bluest Eye at least, is illustrative of complex subjectivities that are situated in places, communities and nations that deny comfortable and coherent lived experiences.
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ISSN:0966-369X
1360-0524
DOI:10.1080/713668872