Black Girl/White Girl: Library Edition
by Joyce Carol Oates
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Although this book took quite awhile to get into (169 pages, to be precise), I'm glad I read it. Joyce Carol Oates has written a ridiculous number of books, and I was worried her style would be like the female version of Nicholas Sparks--not quite chick-litty or romance, but just...I don't know, 'cheap'. She's definitely not.
There are several techniques she uses that other writers might want to try--her different formations for flashbacks, her repetition of certain phrases/thoughts, the clue...more
There are several techniques she uses that other writers might want to try--her different formations for flashbacks, her repetition of certain phrases/thoughts, the clue...more
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Read in July, 2008
This was good, but apparently not good enough for me to remember too well. I know it was compelling, and had something to do with a self-concious, but proud, young Southern black girl who wound up roommates with a self-hating liberal whitey from Pennsylvania. The black girl's own deliberate extracation of herself from the uppity school's largely white, but even black, female community baffles and intrigues her friend, who guiltily takes pride in having a black friend, and uses it as a token to c...more
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Read in October, 2008
Joyce Carol Oates is a very smart author. She knows a lot about location, a lot about history, and a lot about language. However, as a reader, I often find myself feeling very aware of these things as I read her books: that she, as the author, is going to tell me about this location or this event in history or that now, she is going to use this particularly literary device to tell this section of her story. Instead of enhancing her stories, it often fragments them for me, the r...more
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Read in April, 2008
recommends it for:
one who wants to read something different
Disclaimer: do not read this book in search of a happy ending. You won't find it here. I promise.
Generva Meade, daughter of radical activist lawyer Maximillian Meade and ex-flower child Veronica Hewett-Meade, is in her freshman year at Schuyler College, some old Quaker school founded by her great grandfather and known for promoting racial integration. She seeks friendship with her roomate Minette Swift, a Merit scholar student, daughter of Revered Virgil Swift.
Generva tries from the st...more
Generva Meade, daughter of radical activist lawyer Maximillian Meade and ex-flower child Veronica Hewett-Meade, is in her freshman year at Schuyler College, some old Quaker school founded by her great grandfather and known for promoting racial integration. She seeks friendship with her roomate Minette Swift, a Merit scholar student, daughter of Revered Virgil Swift.
Generva tries from the st...more
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Read in May, 2008
I was completely misled by the summary of this book in the inside jacket. I really thought " Black Girl/White Girl" was about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the murder of black liberal arts student at predominately white private school and her roommates finally admiting 15 years later that show was involved and/or know who killed her. Boy, was I mistaken. This is probably the lamest book I've read in years. Minnette Swift "The black girl" is one of the most unlikea...more
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Read in January, 2008
i seem to be unable to read a book without a mentally ill woman in the background. mentally ill mothers are of course the most popular, but mentally ill sisters don't fare badly either. in this book we have a mentally ill (i think one would describe her as unbalanced) mother and an irresponsible father. literary fathers are mercurial, unpredictable, brilliant, incomprehensible, elusive, and irresponsible. mothers are fucked up, pathetic, ever-present. that the parent who sticks around should be ...more
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recommends it for:
Anyone trying to give Lynn Truss a stroke
I needed to find out for myself how bad Joyce Carol Oates is. Let me begin by explaining that I only bought this book out of desperation in an airport bookstore, since it seemed at least a step more towards that-which-one-calls "literature" than everything else there. And, yes, I would say it's an attempt at literature-- but how badly written! From the beginning, it's full of flat characterization, something that I believe Oates thinks is foreshadowing and a subtle revealing of backgro...more
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Read in April, 2008
This book was so awesome, definetely one of her best, and that's saying something. It starts 25 years after the murder, and you know a girl was killed in college. The rest of the book tells the story of how that happended. It's a mystery, but really character driven, and you are really there in the action. The main character is a priveledged white girl with a guilty crush on her minister's daughter black college roomate. Our hero spends the thrust of the book trying to figure out her roomat...more
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Read in June, 2008
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Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
anyone
I am reading this and have made it to about page 75 but I was hooked on page 1. Sometimes, Oates' novels are hard for me to get into, and I give up. I have liked about half of them. I can always tell by page 10 if it's a winner or not. :)
Her short stories, on the other hand, have always struck me as genius, and "Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is still one of my favorites.
The unsettling nature of race relations on a personal level is a genius and timely topic. The br...more
Her short stories, on the other hand, have always struck me as genius, and "Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?" is still one of my favorites.
The unsettling nature of race relations on a personal level is a genius and timely topic. The br...more
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Read in June, 2008
I didn't enjoy this as much as The Tattooed Girl, but it was still quite good and engrossing. It's an exploration of civil rights and races, but also the blackness and whiteness of morality and semantics. So it's very cleverly designed. But I was more interested in the civil rights element. After months of harrassment, an African American woman suffers a brutal death during her freshman year of college, and her white roommateis left feeling guilty.
The book is dark, of course, and the ending...more
The book is dark, of course, and the ending...more
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Read in August, 2007
Black Girl/White Girl by Joyce Carol Oates is the story of two co-eds in a liberal arts college in 1975. One is white, the other is black. Racial tension is still present at the predominately white college. Race is the least of the differences between the two girls. I’m writing this review several months after reading the book. I do remember enjoying it, although there were parts that were emotionally difficult to read (when the black roommate was victim to racial graffiti, violence, etc). T...more
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Read in July, 2008
recommended to Erica by:
my mom
This is a complicated drama told by a college Freshman attending an elite, East coast liberal arts school that was founded by her great-grandfather. She is a priviledged, meek girl, trying to find herself, which she ends up doing through her roommate, the cold, suspecting Minette Swift, one of only several minority students at the college in the early 70's. After Minette's mysterious death halfway through the spring term, the story of the narrator's upbringing begins to unravel and expose her ...more
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Read in September, 2008
I thought i was really going to like this because I read the synopsis and it seemed like a great murder mysery involving race relations during the civil rights movement....but it wasn't that at all. I wished it wouldn't have given away that Minette Swift was going to die, because that happens at the very end. I agree that a restrucuring would have made it better, as in if it was almost backwards, her death happening at the beginning and than told in flashbacks.
I also found the desciptions ki...more
I also found the desciptions ki...more
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Has a copy to sell/swap
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Read in June, 2007
recommends it for:
Literary Types
The title fools you...and so does the protagonist. This past summer I ventured out of my "beach read" phase and tried something a little heavier and more thought provoking...what emerged was this novel about a white girl who carries the guilt of her race and her country upon her shoulders. To exonerate herself, she tries, desperately in my opinion, to befriend the most uncompromising and least friendly black girl at her Women's College
Joyce Carol Oates is an institution, of course....more
Joyce Carol Oates is an institution, of course....more
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Read in October, 2008
It took me forever to get through this book, which initially made me think that maybe I didn't love it so much. But now that it's been a couple weeks since I finished it, I realize that it is still haunting me! JCO's characterization is fascinating and expert (I guess that's what happens when you've written 800 books).
There is so much mystery here. As it builds, you think it will resolve as the book draws to a close, but it only heightens. And then the book ends, and the mystery is still...more
There is so much mystery here. As it builds, you think it will resolve as the book draws to a close, but it only heightens. And then the book ends, and the mystery is still...more
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