Ms. Hen reviews The Sacrifice

The Sacrifice

Joyce Carol Oates

Harper Collins

2015

Ms. Hen decided to read this because she found it at a Little Free Library near where she lives that she discovered by accident when she was going for a walk. She decided to read this, because she read about it, and found out it is about racism, and was intrigued, because that is a topical subject right now.

This novel is about a black teenage girl named Sybilla Frye who she claims is attacked and raped by a group of white police officers who kidnap her on her way home from school. In the opening chapter, her mother runs around the neighborhood of Red Rock, Pascayne, New Jersey looking for her. A neighbor finds her in a run-down factory, and calls the police. Sybilla and her mother don’t want to cooperate with the authorities and Sybilla doesn’t want to be interviewed or tested because she and her mother are afraid. A lawyer and preacher twin brothers take Sybilla and her mother under their wings, and profess to want to help them, and bring the men to justice.

This novel is told through different point of views: the girl’s mother, Ednetta; the detective, Ines Iglesias; Ada, the woman who finds Sybilla in the abandoned building; Ednetta’s common law husband Anis, a murderous, angry man who beat his first wife to death; Jere Zahn, a white cop who is released from the force and commits suicide, and various other characters.

This novel was based on actual events that happened in upstate New York about thirty years ago, when a young black girl named Tawana Brawley claimed that she was raped by a group of white men who were mostly police officers, and was defended by Al Sharpton, but later the whole things turned out to be a hoax.

Ms. Hen didn’t know how she felt about this novel when she was reading it. She thinks that some people might get offended that a white woman is tackling a subject like this. She did some research, and read some reviews, and there has been a mixed response. She read a review in the New York Times by Roxanne Gay, about how people should not write about the other:

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/books/review/the-sacrifice-by-joyce-carol-oates.html

Ms. Hen read another, glowing review by Rose Tremain, a white British author who loved the book:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jan/12/the-sacrifice-joyce-carol-oates-review

The ending of this book left Ms. Hen unsatisfied. She never gets to know what happens to the characters. And the last person’s point of view is not the most important in the book. Ms. Hen knows that such stories don’t end well, but she would like to have known what happened to Sybilla and her mother and everyone else.

  

Ms. Hen thinks that the characters in The Sacrifice are like others in novels about black people, and this book was possibly inspired by reading books and articles about black people rather than actually knowing what they go through from first hand experience. Ms. Hen thinks that Ms. Oates can get away with this because she is an established writer, and if an up and coming (white) writer tried to publish a novel like this today, that person would be squashed down like a bug under a person’s shoe, and the book would never see the light of day, and the person’s career would never happen.

Why does Joyce Carol Oates get to write about the African American experience and have authority to do so? Did she decide one day that she would write about racism because it’s a hot topic? Who gives the white writer power to write about whatever they want? Does anyone have the right to write about a culture that is not their own? And if they do, can they do it successfully, and be respected for their work?

Ms. Hen doesn’t know the answers to these questions. She is asking the universe and hopes that someone, somewhere will find the answer.