Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oatesis an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over 40 novels, as well as a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. She has won many awards for her writing, including the National Book Award, for her novel them, two O. Henry Awards, and the National Humanities Medal. Her novels Black Water, What I Lived For, Blonde, and short story collections The Wheel of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth16 June 1938
CityLockport, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Yes, 'Black Girl/White Girl' might be described as a 'coming-of-age' novel, at least for the survivor Genna. It is also intended as a comment on race relations in America more generally: we are 'roommates' with one another, but how well do we know one another?
We inhabit ourselves without valuing ourselves, unable to see that here, now, this very moment is sacred; but once it’s gone – its value is incontestable.
Beauty is a question of optics. All sight is illusion.
For obviously the advantage for most writers is that no one sees them. The writer is invisible, which confers power.
I love insult, it's always honest.
Nothing comes of so many things, if you have patience.
Impossible not to imagine the dead observing us. Our love for them a soft, shimmering gossamar that trails behind us.
Better to be despised, then, than to be ignored; or damned with condescending praise.
I probably spend 90% of my time revising what I've written.
Obviously the imagination is fueled by emotions beyond the control of the conscious mind.
The novel is the affliction for which only the novel is the cure.
Princeton is quite integrated. Women are professors at Princeton. Women are students at Princeton. That began in the 1970s.
...failure is a human condition, not victory over odds; for each Hellen Keller who triumphs, there are tens of millions who fail, mute and deaf and insensate as vegetables tossed upon a vast garbage pile to rot.
Detroit, my 'great' subject, made me the person I am, consequently the writer I am - for better or worse.