Black and Blue.

This is my response to the book "The Bluest Eye" by Toni Morrison. Probably one of the most intense books I've ever read. So of course I immediately related it to one of the most intense art forms I've ever seen: Spoken Word.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTZrPVqR0D8

please watch the video before you continue reading the post. Don't be left in the dark.

Pecola Breadlove. Daniel Beaty.
A daughter. A son.
Fiction. Real.
His father left.
Her father came.
Neither left the same,
Forced to change
With one man to blame.

One raised himself up
Into a man
Proclaiming "I can.
I can knock knock down the doors of racism
When they are slammed.
Shut his eyes and proclaim
"We are our fathers' sons and daughters, but we will not be damned.
We can."

The other knock knocked down
To never smile, her lips forever turned the other way around
But never mind the frown
Because she'll never be beautiful
Not even blue eyes could erase
The face only a daddy will love
Not just because it was brown,
But, God, she was ugly.

To those looking from the other side
The other side of store counters
And white picket fences

They wouldn't see a fatherless little boy.
A raped little girl.
No name to match the face.
Not Pecola. Not Daniel.
The only thing they had in common,
The only thing that mattered,
What defined them as a human-being,
The only thing that they were seeing,

Was brown.

~Kat