Hopefully you've all managed to find tonight's discussion...so here we go! Click on the comments box if you have something to say - positive or negative - about '
Black Girl White Girl'.
As a reminder - Humz posed some interesting questions to get things started:
1. Why does Genna decide to write down and reconstruct what happened to Minette 15 years ago?
2. Which character did you most sympathise with and why?
3. What do you think race relations were like at Schuyler?
Hi everyone. I hope you have all enjoyed (or are enjoying)
Black Girl White Girl. At the very least, I hope you have found lots to discuss about it. As I suggested the book, I thought I should post some possible questions for you to think about and to start us off at the next meeting. So, here are some questions to consider:
Why does Gemma decide to write down and reconstruct what happened to Minette 15 years ago?
Which character did you most sympathise with and why?
What do you think race relations were like at Schuyler?
I don't think any of these questions give away the plot at all if you haven't finished the book yet. Look forward to meeting with you soon. Humz
Thanks Humz - for researching this month's book. It sounds like an interesting read, and quite different from March's choice (but then most books would be!)
I'm looking forward to learning more about the racial issues ocurring in the States at this time- and also from the female perspective (this is our first book choice written by a female author too).
Blog by Humz:
Joyce Carol Oates is an incredibly prolific and successful author, with over forty novels to her name and that is not counting her work as a short story writer, children’s author, poet and numerous non-fiction works to her credit. She is a recipient of the National Book Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction and she was given the Prix Femina for her novel, “The Falls”. She is currently at Princeton University, where she is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of Humanities and she has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. Yet, despite all her success, she is not nearly as well known in the UK as she is in the United States, which is a great shame.
Oates is the eldest of three children and was a voracious reader, winning a scholarship to Syracuse University to major in English and winning writing awards when she was just 19. By the time she had gained her master’s degree she had already published novels and her output has continued to be staggering. Her books range from “Blonde”, a fictional account of the life of Marilyn Monroe, to “Middle Age: A Romance”, which is a wonderful account of the inhabitants of an affluent hamlet, to “Black Water” – the story of the scandal in which a young girl lost her life in Ted Kennedy’s car (the time it takes to read the book is apparently as long as it took the unfortunate girl to die).
What Oates does best is people and how they work. Families, relationships and motivations are her bread and butter. In her time she has taken some difficult themes: “Mother, Missing” and “Rape: A Love Story” give you a sense of very touchy subjects she has dared to touch. The difficult issue of race, especially in some areas of the States, is no different. “
Black Girl White Girl” is an honest look at the race issue in America from an author who attended school in a segregated town.
“
Black Girl White Girl” follows the story of two roommates in an exclusive liberal arts college. Fifteen years after the mysterious death of Minette, a 19 year old black student, her former roommate Genna begins an official enquiry into the traumatic events. This leads her to reconstruct her own life as the daughter of a famous radical lawyer and the time of crisis following the end of the Vietnam War.
I hope that you are intrigued enough by the story and the author to read further. Please find a link below which will give you some further information on the author and an interview about the book:
http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/7275/Joyce_Carol_Oates/index.aspx
