Joyce Carol Oates' Black Girl/White Girl: Lukewarm at Best!

In Joyce Carol Oates' Black Girl/White Girl,Genna Meade is a first year student at an all women's liberal arts college in Schuyler, Pennsylvania in 1974 and 1975. Racial tensions run high, even in that politically liberal environment, in part because the college is still mostly white. Genna is the descendant of the college's founder and is rooming with Minette Swift, a black, a preacher's daughter from Washington, D.C. Genna tells the story of her roommate's death in this novel.

The girls are a study in contrasts and are, in fact, complete opposites in everything. Genna loves being at college; she is away from her overbearing "hippie" mother and her lawyer father. Genna does not want to accept calls from her mother, avoids her like the plague when she comes to visit and is generally happy to be away from home. Minette, on the other hand, is homesick. She receives daily phone calls from her family and nearly daily care packages from them as well. Genna and Minette attempt to become friends in spite of their differences.

Throughout the academic year, Minette is subjected to mean-spirited racially based harassment. The harassment begins with seemingly harmless pranks. For instance, one of Minette's textbooks is stolen, vandalized and left for her to be found outside of the girls' dormitory. It increases in magnitude throughout the year, with nasty notes being left for her and nasty words being written on doorway, as well as glass being thrown on the shower floor just prior to Minette going to take a shower.

Genna valiantly strives to protect Minette from these harmful words, images and actions, initially because acceptance has been ingrained in her by her activist father and then because she is afraid of being accused of the harassment. At the end of the novel, she attempts to protect Minette because she genuinely respects her. In spite of Genna's efforts, Minette lapses into a deep depression and eventually dies in a fire. Genna's role then becomes to unravel the mystery of her roommate's death: was it really an accident?

I had mixed feelings about this novel. It was a noble and valiant attempt at understanding the psychology of race relations at a time in our nation's history where the civil rights' movement was fresh in the memory of the main characters. Many of the characters had lived through the Civil Rights movement. Oates' writing style is also very enjoyable and accessible.

The words and sentences flowed nicely and evenly. However, the characters were very shallow. I did not see much development of them and they remained as two-dimensional stereotypes throughout the entire book. For an author that brought us works such as The Falls and We Were the Mulvaneys, this book was a disappointment.

This is not a must-own book but well worth a trip to the library.