Joyce Carol Oates, Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart

Martin Kich (Wright State University)

Ed. by Sofia Ahlberg, Uppsala University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Sofia Ahlberg (Uppsala University), Patrick Chura (University of Akron), Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1990

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Nominated for the National Book Award, this novel focuses on a community in upstate New York over about a decade from the middle of the 1950s through the middle of the 1960s. There are four families who represent the socio-economic and racial groups in the community: an African-American family struggling with the constraints of systemic racism, a lower-class white family who are recent transplants from Appalachia, working-class white residents whose lives seem to have promise but whose personal failings prevent them from achieving any sustained upward mobility, and educated white professionals who enjoy an upper-middle-class level of affluence and contentment.

The African American family is the Fairchilds—Woodrow and Minnie and their two sons, Woodrow, Jr., nicknamed “Sugar Baby”,

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3503 words

Citation: Kich, Martin. "Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 06 June 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12194, accessed 27 July 2024.]

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