Summerize There can’t be anyone, I am sure, who doesn’t know what it feels like to be disliked, even rejected, momentarily or for sus-
tained periods of time. Perhaps the feeling is merely indiffer-
ence, mild annoyance, but it may also be hurt. It may even be

that some of us know what it is like to be actually hated—
hated for things we have no control over and cannot change.
When this happens, it is some consolation to know that the
dislike or hatred is unjustified—that you don’t deserve it. And
if you have the emotional strength and/or support from family
and friends, the damage is reduced or erased. We think of it as
the stress (minor or disabling) that is part of life as a human.
When I began writing The Bluest Eye, I was interested

in something else. Not resistance to the contempt of oth-
ers, ways to deflect it, but the far more tragic and disabling

consequences of accepting rejection as legitimate, as self-
evident. I knew that some victims of powerful self-loathing

turn out to be dangerous, violent, reproducing the enemy
who has humiliated them over and over. Others surrender