Resistance Against Oppression: African American Women’s Opposition to Gaze in The Bluest Eye

Abstract

Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye describes the pain and tragedy the minority group of African Americans suffered caused by the abandonment of cultural traditions with her affective depiction. Focusing on the efforts made by some of the African Americans in this novel to fight against the gazes they experienced from both white oppression and male domination, this paper intends to discuss the attitudes and actions taken by those African American women in the face of double oppression from the perspective of post-colonial feminism, analyze their resistance to gaze, rejection to white aesthetics, and adherence to traditional values, in order to reveal the courageous and tenacious image of African American women portrayed by Morrison as fighters against unjust gaze.