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