University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

When I was a child, my granny encouraged me to read and instilled in me a love of female Southern authors. I could always find books by Alice Walker, Harper Lee, bell hooks, Dorothy Allison, and Lorraine Hansberry, among others, on her nightstand. Reading such writers has shaped how I view and understand the world and my role in it. To me, The Bluest Eye is a perfect representation of feminist Southern literature, and its themes of racism, sexism, and classism are still extremely relevant to the United States today.