Research Paper: Initial Step

This weekend, I need to hear/write down/briefly discuss with all of you (those that submitted their summer readings and those that didn't) the QUESTION you are going to wrestle with for your longer research paper. These cyber meetings can be as brief as possible (you might use this forum to let me know if you prefer it that way), as long as you have something to tell me.

My task is to help you read/build up the paper's bibliography.

So. Let's work. It can be both useful/utalitarian and seemly.

The Bluest Eye

'Passing' (for white) is a cultural phenomenon that has captivated writers throughout American letters (the list includes names as diverse as Charles Chesnutt, Sinclair Lewis, Nella Larsen, Mark Twain, William Faulkner). Today this American trope seeems as far removed from the American literary conscience as the Ice Age.

In each of her seven novels and in her sole short story, Toni Morrison invokes the passing myth, sometimes in only one or two paragraphs, often done indirectly.

The Bluest Eye features a dark-skinned child who cannot possibly pass for white, yet Pecola Breedlove ignores biology and becomes (if only to herself) a blue-eyed Shirley Temple. Although some might consider Pecola's delusion a weak (or perhaps specious) representation of passing for white, The Bluest Eye artfully reinforces its interest in racial passing by alluding to Peola, the passing figure in Imitation of Life. This intertextual play effectively evokes the myth without actually representing the phenomenon of passing, and in this way Morrison decenters and deforms the traditional passing figure. In your opinion, why is this an important strating point for the novelist?

The Toni Morrison society

Check it out at: http://www.tonimorrisonsociety.org/ and give me your thoughts on what is there...