A controversial, painfully intimate depiction of race in America by the esteemed author of 'We Were the Mulvaneys', 'Blonde' and 'The Falls'. Fifteen years after the mysterious death of Minette Swift -- a 19-year-old black girl enrolled as a scholarship student in an exclusive liberal arts college -- her former roommate Genna begins an unofficial enquiry into the traumatic event. In reconstructing the girls' tumultuous freshman year at the college, Genna is lead also to reconstruct her life as the daughter of a famous 'radical-hippie-lawyer' of the 1960s among whose clients were anti-Vietnam War protestors wanted by the F.B.I. What follows is a gripping, painful, and intimate depiction of 'black' and 'white' in America in the years of crisis following the end of the Vietnam War and the ignominious exposure and fall of President Richard Nixon.
Black Girl / White Girl tells the story of Genna Hewett-Mead who is reflecting on a traumatic event in her past. Fifteen years ago, in 1975 while attending an exclusive women’s liberal arts college near Philadelphia, her roommate Minette Swift died a mysterious and violent death. Minette was a scholarship student and one of the few African American women to be let into the college. Genna, a quiet woman of privilege got to witness the effects of racism first hand as the racist harassment escalated from vicious slurs to something far worse. However whoever was responsible for this murder still remains a mystery to this day. I had never read Joyce Carol Oates before and I thought this may be my chance to experience her writing. The premise of this novel intrigued me and I was looking forward to uncovering the mystery at play. However, this turned out to be a novel about reflecting on the changing times; I was interested in learning about racism within America during the time of civil rights movements but this focused too much on Genna.
I understand that Joyce Carol Oates may not want to write a novel from the perspective of a person of colour, since she is Caucasian and probably could not do the situation any justice. Rather she took on the perspective of a woman of privilege experiencing the issue first hand. This may have made the book a little more autobiographical and allowed Oates to still explore the issue of racism. While I enjoyed this book, I did not find anything special about it. Maybe this was not the best example of Joyce Carol Oates’ writing but I will try more of her novels in the future.
This review originally appeared on my blog; http://www.knowledgelost.org/literature/book-reviews/genre/historical-fiction/august-2015-mini-reviews/
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15 May, 2015:
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15 May, 2015:
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