American Literature / Unit 19 AML 1823 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Drill 9: Morrison and Pecola Breedlove
The idea
The board asks in which book Toni Morrison examines the effects of racism, abuse and internalized self-hatred on an eleven-year-old child named Pecola Breedlove, offering Tar-Baby, Beloved, The Color Purple, The Woman Warrior and The Bluest Eye. The answer is The Bluest Eye, Morrison's first novel, of nineteen seventy. Pecola is the girl who prays for blue eyes. Two of the distractors are not Morrison's at all: The Color Purple is Alice Walker's and The Woman Warrior is Maxine Hong Kingston's. Of the two that are hers, Beloved turns on a mother and a returning child, and Tar Baby is about people trapped in self-deceptions.
In practice
Pecola Breedlove, and blue eyes.
Where people slip
Internalized self-hatred is the phrase to hold. It is the exact subject of the first novel and not of the other two Morrison titles offered.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Unlocks
- Nothing yet depends on this.
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