The Bluest Eye 1st Vintage International ed. (17)

Each night Pecola prayed for blue eyes.

In her eleven years, no one had ever noticed Pecola. But with blue eyes, she thought, everything would be different. She would be so pretty that her parents would stop fighting. Her father would stop drinking. Her brother would stop running away. If only she could be beautiful. If only people would look at her.

When someone finally did, it was her father, drunk. He raped her. Soon she would bear his child...