Tending to two small sons and a demanding job, she still managed to plug away at The Bluest Eye, her personal therapy for depression and isolation. Set in the Midwest, the story centers on a compelling, unloved child, Pecola Breedlove, a victim of incest and a survivor of ego abuse. As Morrison describes the compulsion to complete the manuscript, "I had no will, no judgment, no perspective, no power, no authority, no self — just this brutal sense of irony, melancholy, and a trembling respect for words. I wrote like someone with a dirty habit. Secretly — compulsively — slyly." The novel is a haunting portrayal of a marginal child, one so unlovely, so unloved that she finds no reclamation. As Morrison concludes Pecola's tragic destruction, "[O]n the edge of my town, among the garbage and the sunflowers of my town, it's much, much, much too late."
By the time the manuscript was complete in 1968, Morrison had risen to the rank of senior editor at Random House company headquarters in New York City, where, as developer of black talent, she groomed such stars as Angela Davis, Toni Cade Bambara, Wesley Brown, Gayl Jones, and Muhammad Ali. She reports that her own first novel sold for racial reasons: The company wanted a black writer in its stable. When the black fiction market burgeoned, Morrison reminded herself that the trend reflected the honor accorded the struggles of the black race. To steady herself on such holy ground, she repeated a mantra recalling the "very real life-threatening obstacles people in my family face, and whenever I would feel overwhelmed, that's all I had to think about."
