Before Toni Morrison became a Nobel Prize-winning author, she wrote a gripping novel about a young Black girl who believed having blue eyes would make her beautiful. More than 50 years later, “The Bluest Eye” is at the center of a book ban controversy in Georgia, where a major school district has pulled it from library shelves.
Cobb County has removed Morrison’s debut novel from its school libraries due to concerns over depictions of sexual violence, including the rape of Pecola Breedlove by her father, according to The Current. Superintendent Chris Ragsdale said that keeping it on the shelves would allow students to read the material without parental knowledge.
“The words speak for themselves,” Ragsdale said during a September school board meeting. “Both as a father and as a superintendent, I think about a parent having to explain to their sixth-grade daughter after she encounters explicit descriptions of child incest and rape in a book provided at school, without parents’ knowledge.”
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