Beginning ~ with Dick and Jane

FIRST BEGINNING:  "Here is the house.  It is green and white.  It has a red door.  It is very pretty.  Here is the family.  Mother, Father, Dick, and Jane live in the green-and-white house. They are very happy" (p. 3)

SECOND BEGINNING:  "Quiet as it's kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.  We thought, at the time, that it was because Pecola was having her father's baby that the marigolds did not grow" (p. 5).

THIRD BEGINNING:  "Nuns go by as quiet as lust, and drunken men and sober eyes sing in the lobby of the Greek hotel.  Rosemary Villanucci, our next-door friend who lives above her father's café, sits in a 1939 Buick eating bread and butter" (p. 9).

I remember reading the Dick and Jane books when I was in the first grade in 1946.  That's wa-a-a-ay back there.  That first beginning seems to be quoting the early reader used at my school.  The second of those three beginnings indicate we're hearing a story set in 1941.  The third quotes the first words of a longer section called "Autumn."  Okay, I'm ready to jump into the story.

The Bluest Eye ~ by Toni Morrison, 1970, fiction (Ohio)

Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl, prays every day for beauty.  Mocked by other children for the dark skin, curly hair, and brown eyes that set her apart, she yearns for normalcy, for the blond hair and blue eyes that she believes will allow her to finally fit in.  Yet as her dream grows more fervent, her life slowly starts to disintegrate in the face of adversity and strife.  A powerful examination of our obsession with beauty and conformity, Toni Morrison’s virtuosic first novel asks powerful questions about race, class, and gender with the subtlety and grace that have always characterized her writing.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.
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