Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart

by Joyce Carol Oates

Book Overview

Joyce Carol Oates adds to her extraordinary body of work with this stunning National Book Award Finalist filled with violence, love, racism, and a shared secret in mid-century New York. In the early 1950s in an industrial town, racial boundaries may keep people apart--or bring them together explosively. Iris Courtney, who is white, is the only witness when handsome Jinx Fairchild, a black basketball player, kills a white man in order to protect her...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452265819
• ISBN13: 9780452265813
• Release Date: March 1991
• Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

It's a Crime That She Hasn't Yet Been Awarded the Nobel!!!

I haven't read every Joyce Carol Oates novel, only a few of the 30 odd ones she has written. Based on what I have read, and especially this book, I feel it is a crime that Oates has yet to win literature's higest honor.I read this book several years back and recently returned to it as part of a personal study of different literary styles. "Because It Is Bitter" is one of my five favorite novels. Oates's skill at putting herself in the shoes of virtually every type of character imaginable is simply astonishing. After reading this book I couldn't believe that she has also inhabited the head of an African American male like me. And she surely understands all of the ramifications of this nation's racial sickness.Kudos to Oates, from one author (of nonfiction) to another, for this extremely brave and deeply moving book.

Brazen and contemplative--Oates at her best

Even in the realm of Oates--one of our most fearless authors today--this is a brave and brash examination of race and sex. I loved this book because it is an unblinking look at a span of life and all the variables: sex, class, family, morality. If you've never read Oates, this is a great place to start, and if you are already a fan, this is a must-read.

One of Oates's best

This gripping, powerful novel is one of the best Joyce Carol Oates has written -- and that's saying a lot, since she has published about 30 novels, some of them as good as anything by an American in the last fifty years (and, to be honest, some of them as bad).You can read the novel simply to become absorbed in the events and characters, or you can read it as a study of morality, of the implications of race and gender, of violence and American dreams. I've read it three times, and each time I have come away more impressed with Oates's achievement. This is a stunningly vivid work -- her command of English prose here is at a level reached with her earlier realistic novels, Wonderland and them. Give yourself over to the writing, and you will truly feel every page of this book.A warning, though: It's not an uplifting story, despite an ostensibly happy ending. The characters suffer, and the world they inhabit is brutal and unforgiving. But the pain is not without meaning, and moments in this story reach heights of tragedy which few American writers have scaled.Even if you've hated things you've by Joyce Carol Oates in the past, don't dismiss this novel. It will dig itself into your consciousness.

Because it is Brilliant

People often say that a book was so good they couldn't put it down ... well this was so good I had to put it down, so I could absorb it and think about it and savour it. Oates delves so deeply into her characters it's almost painful. They are wonderfully human and believable. The story -- about how a murder binds together two teens, a poor white girl and a star black male athlete -- evokes working class America, in this case industrial upstate New York. Enjoyable and emotional.

I found a writer

As a foreigner interested in american litterature I test various authors relying on opportunities for discovery. With J.C Oates, and with this book in particular, this is a different story. This is a piece of litterary art, style, composition, connection to contemporary issues (male/female relationships, children parents, blacks / whites in the 50ies). If you want to further explore what being an author means, get hold of "The Assignation" from the same author. A collection of astounding text miniatures.