The Bluest Eye

Frieda y su hermana caminan de noche para recoger las miserias de carbón al costado de la vía para calentar la casa. De regreso en la miserable casa entran al único cuarto iluminado con una lámpara de kerosene. La otra está obscura, llena de ratas y cucarachas. “Los blancos se enojan cuando nos enfermamos: ¡Qué desconsiderados! ¿Quién va a limpiar?” Y la cura viene de la mano del aceite de castor. Cuando la oyen toser le ordenan que se meta en cama. Seguramente no se tapó la cabeza. “Tienes que tapar los agujeros con trapos”… de The Bluest Eye, de Toni Morrison.

En vocabulario encontramos burlap y buscamos que es Castor Oil. Más abajo ponemos un link donde se puede leer la obra.

Al final encontramos una foto de Mussolini y sus Camisas Negras.

 

Primera edición

The Bluest Eye (Los Ojos más Azules), de Toni Morrison, narra un año de la vida de una joven con complejo de inferioridad por el color de su piel. La historia se desarrolla en Lorain, Ohio, en la época de la depresión en los Estados Unidos. Debido a lo controversial del libro, que trata sobre racismo, incesto y abuso de niños, ha habido algunos intentos por prohibirlo en las escuelas.

Paragraphs

… 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 cafe, sits in a 1939 Buick eating bread and butter. She rolls down the window to tell my sister Frieda and me that we can't come in. We stare at her, wanting her bread, but more than that wanting to poke the arrogance out of her eyes and smash the pride of ownership that curls her chewing mouth. When she comes out of the car we will beat her up, make red marks on her white skin, and she will cry and ask us do we want her to pull her pants down. We will say no. We don't know what we should feel or do if she does, but whenever she asks us, we know she is offering us something precious and that our own pride must be asserted by refusing to accept.

School has started, and Frieda and I get new brown stockings and cod-liver oil. Grown-ups talk in tired, edgy voices about Zick's Coal Company and take us along in the evening to the railroad tracks where we fill burlap sacks with the tiny pieces of coal lying about. Later we walk home, glancing back to see the great carloads of residues being dumped, red hot and smoking, into the ravine that skirts the steel mill. The dying fire lights the sky with a dull orange glow. Frieda and I lag behind, staring at the patch of color surrounded by black. It is impossible not to feel a shiver when our feet leave the gravel path and sink into the dead grass in the field.

Our house is old, cold, and green. At night a kerosene lamp lights one large room. The others are braced in darkness, peopled by roaches and mice. Adults do not talk to us -- they give us directions. They issue orders without providing information. When we trip and fall down they glance at us; if we cut or bruise ourselves, they ask us are we crazy. When we catch colds, they shake their heads in disgust at our lack of consideration. How, they ask us, do you expect anybody to get anything done if you all are sick? We cannot answer them. Our illness is treated with contempt, foul Black Draught, and castor oil that weaken our minds.

When, on a day after a trip to collect coal, I cough once, loudly, through bronchial tubes already packed tight with phlegm, my mother frowns. "Great Jesus. Get on in that bed. How many times do I have to tell you to wear something on your head? You must be the biggest fool in this town. Frieda? Get some rags and stuff that window."… (The Bluest Eyes, by Toni Morrison.)

Vocabulario

Burlap is a woven fabric made of vegetable fibres, usually the skin of the jute plant or sisal leaves. It is generally used for duties of rough handling, such as making sacks employed to ship farm products and to act as covers for sandbags.

Burlap: arpillera.

Propaganda de aceite de castor

Para saber

Castor oil (aceite de castor) ha sido usado oralmente para ayudar en la constipación.

Una dosis alta de aceite de castor se usaba como castigo para los adultos. Los militares belgas prescribían fuertes dosis en el Congo belga como castigo por ser demasiado lento para trabajar.

En la Italia fascista de Benito Mussolini era usado por los Camisas Negras para humillar a sus oponentes.

Fascistas en 1922

Artículos relacionados

Los trapos han caído de la rendija de la ventana y el aire es frío. No me atrevo… Los Ojos más Azules

… reportó desde Abisinia (Etiopía y Eritrea) en la época de la invasión italiana de 1935… Evelyn Waugh

… que vive en la pobreza total en una humilde área de la zona sur de Chicago, en la década del… Native Son

Fuentes

The Bluest Eye, Wikipedia