Mixtape for Banned Books Syllabus: Part II

A few months ago, I posted about the mixtape I was working on for my Banned Books course. The mixtape encompasses numerous themes from disparities in policing with songs such as Run the Jewels’ “Early” to songs such as Lightnin’ Hopkins’ “Tim Moore’s Farm” which details the convict lease system and sharecropping to Dessa’s “Fire Drills” which provides insight, as Dessa told NPR, “about the experience of traveling as a woman, and often as a woman alone” and the double standard of having to remain ever vigilant in the face sexism and violence. Today, I want to continue looking at the mixtape by focusing on three songs that directly relate, through their examination of beauty standards, to novels such as Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and other texts we are reading this semester.

noname “beauty supply”

At one point on Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Pecola, along with Claudia, Frieda, and Maureen Peals, walk past the theater and see an image of Betty Grable staring down at them from the marquee. Maureen asks Pecola if she loves Grable, and Pecola responds…