Toni Morrison ' s ' The Bluest Eye '. Aside from how beautifully written the novel is , the way Morrison explores systemic racism and the articulation of the African American self blew me away . It ' s one of those multiperspective novels that has the effect of disturbing the reader ' s complacency in keeping to one perspective , a complacency which often leads to people drawing strict dichotomies of goodbad , villainvictim , etc . Selfpolicing and hypervisibility are big themes in this novel , which I think are concepts a lot of people in our society have yet to understand . <| sep |> This is actually an interesting question . I tend to get a little quiet when I drink especially in a setting with a majority being new people . Though there is this mysterious threshold that , if I can hit it without going too far past it , I ' m absolved of anxiety . At the moment , I think this threshold is a shot and a beer with too much being somewhere past three shots and a few beers . Smoking though just delays my reactions and responses which builds my anxiety . So I tend to avoid it if I know I need to hold a conversation or there is potential that I may be called upon to say something . My indicator for whether or not I can smoke in X situation is whether I can wear headphones or not . Laundromat ? Yes . Grocery store ? Yes . Going for a run ? Yes .