SOURCE: Harris, Trudier. “Reconnecting Fragments: Afro-American Folk Tradition in The Bluest Eye.” In Critical Essays on Toni Morrison, edited by Nellie Y. McKay, pp. 68-76. Boston: G. K. Hall & Co., 1988.

In the following essay, Harris examines the influence of African American folk traditions in The Bluest Eye with respect to the relation between communal patterns of survival and coping and the shaping of individual character.

The Bluest Eye is not only the story of the destructive effects of inter- and intraracial prejudice upon impressionable black girls in the midwest; it is also the story of Afro-American folk culture in process. Through subtle and not-so-subtle ways, Toni Morrison suggests that the vibrancy of the folk culture persists through the fortunes and misfortunes of the characters, and it serves to baptize them into kinship with each other. From folk wisdom to the blues, from folk speech to myths and other...