Helicopter Parents and Ignorant Actions

Toni Morrison, author of The Bluest Eye and Nobel Prize winner, is well-respected for the literature she writes. This type of literature is called Recovery Literature, which is defined as an effort on the part of contemporary writers who, in the wake of cultural fragmentation brought on by integration, seek to recall aspects of the past African American culture when they were contained in small cohesive communities tied closely to the land of the rural south. Recovery Literature such as The Bluest Eye is essential in any learning environment due to the history it represents, but School Boards across the nation are having these books removed from the shelves. There are several cases where concerned parents wish to remove Morrison’s The Bluest Eye due to its graphic language. Parents in these challenges on graphic language wish to censor the incestuous rape scene and the language used when describing sexual actions that occur in the book. In other cases the book is accused of being anti-white on the basis of two situations in the book where whites are mentioned. Censoring Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye due to its incestuous rape scene, anti-white claims and graphic language is wrong because school boards are removing the history of African American culture in the 1940s.

One major reason parents wish to ban Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is for the rape scene. The sad and misunderstood rape of Pecola by her father Cholly is interpreted at face value. For example the Littleton Public School Districts, LPSD, “pulled all copies of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye . . . from the shelves of its high school libraries . . . [when] The board decision to remove the novel . . . was in response to a parent who challenged its explicit descriptio...

... middle of paper ...

... Bluest Eye. New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2010. 97-101. EBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 16 Apr. 2014.

"Censorship Roundup." School Library Journal 51.12 (2005): 20. Literary Reference Center. Web. 4 Apr. 2014.

Foerstel, Herbert N. "The Most Frequently Banned or Challenged Books, 1996–2000." Banned In The U.S.A : A Reference Guide To Book Censorship In Schools And Public Libraries. Westport, Conn: Greenwood, 2002. 231-32. EBook Collection (EBSCOhost). Web. 23 Apr. 2014.

Hull, Mary. Censorship In America : A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, Calif: n.p., 1999.

Lancto, Craig. "Banned Books." World and I 18.9 (2003): 258. MasterFILE Elite. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.

"Maryland Schools Ban Books by Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison." Jet 26 Jan. 1998: 12. Middle Search Plus. Web. 6 Apr. 2014.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Vintage, 1970. Print.