The Bluest Eye is a compassionate, unflinching look at poverty, racial inequity, and violence against women.

Brecheen treats this scene as a tawdry form of pornography, instead of a pivotal moment in a heart-wrenching narrative about a girl whose community cares more about hiding the evidence of a crime than her well-being.Д«ooks give students the context and skills to critique their own lives and communities. Within the novel, as PecolaвЂ™s pregnancy becomes more visible, PecolaвЂ™s school attempts to ban her from the classroom, and her community shuns her. Brecheen indicate that the sexual scene he was reading aloud was not consensual, nor that the subsequent blame and ostracization Pecola encounters from her community in the aftermath drive much of the bookвЂ™s conflict. At no point in his description of the book did Sen. Brecheen chose to read describes the incestuous rape of Pecola. He later described the scene as вЂњmiserably graphic,вЂќ apparently due to its sexual content. Brecheen read aloud a paragraph taken grossly out of context, choosing to spell out some of the words rather than read them in full. In his attempt to prove why The Bluest Eye is inappropriate, Sen. She eventually miscarries and appears to be insane by the end of the novel. In the course of the novel, Pecola is raped by her father and subsequently becomes pregnant. The novelвЂ™s protagonist is a poor, eleven year-old Black girl named Pecola Breedlove, who dearly wishes she had blue eyes вЂ“ an unattainable standard of white beauty. The Bluest Eye is by no means an easy read.

By giving them the tools to understand the world around them, The Bluest Eye equips readers to change that world. Its frank portrayal of poverty, misogyny, and racism, still all too common in Oklahoma, helps readers to empathize with those affected by oppression. BrecheenвЂ™s use of The Bluest Eye indicates not only fundamental misunderstanding of the work but also precisely why Oklahomans ought to read it. Ignoring that Common Core doesnвЂ™t require any schools to read The Bluest Eye (the books listed are suggestions), Sen.

Josh Brecheen (R-Coalgate) read a passage from Toni MorrisonвЂ™s novel The Bluest Eye as part of his effort to derail Common Core in Oklahoma. On the state Senate floor in the waning hours of the final day of the 2014 legislative session, Sen.

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