Joyce Carol Oates Biography

Throughout history, society has been used as a means of inspiration for writers of all genres. More often then not, writers do not shine a light on the positive aspects of society, they chose to focus on the decline of the modern world. For a writer to truly capture this societal decline, they must be brave enough to accept it. For one writer in particular, her passion and style are what fuel her to create masterpieces of literature centered on that very topic. With her ability to focus on modern American society with topics such as rape, child abuse and murder, Joyce Carol Oates’s novels have been able to capture the sometimes cruel reality of American life in an unorthodox way.

Joyce Carol Oates was born on June 16th, 1938, in Lockport, New York. Raised on her parent’s farm in a rural area that had been hit by the Great Depression, she attended the same one-room school house as her mother. As a young child, Oates developed a love of literature and writing well beyond her years. She was very encouraged by her parents and grandparents to pursue her love of writing and as a teenager she was given her first typewriter. This was when her passion finally came to life. In 1953 at the age of only 15, she wrote her first novel about the rehabilitation of a drug dealer, which was later turned down by the publisher because the topic was not suitable for a young audience. Although her novels do focus on the horrors of society, her childhood growing up was no reflection of that. Oates has admitted that her childhood was “dull, ordinary and nothing people would be interested in. Oates continued writing throughout high school and earned a scholarship to attend Syracuse University. There she graduated at the top of her class in 1960, and in...

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...hich is about 238,000 people a year. Of all of these cases, 60% are never reported. A shocking two-thirds of these accounts of rape were committed by someone the person knew. As well as abuse, child abuse is an issue of today. About 70% of these children are under four years old about many never receive the help they need. There is also a tie between physical, sexual and emotional abuse in families that have a lower income of less than $1,500 a year. Over the last few years, abuse and murder have started to decrease, but they are no where closer to ending. However, while Joyce Carol Oates wrote a majority of her books from the 60’s to the 2000s, murder and abuse were at their peak. In reading Oates’s novels from this time period, one can see the real tragedy of so many Americans have faces, many who were unable to find a voice to express what was happening to them.