Black Girl / White Girl, by Joyce Carol Oates, has a lot of similarities to the book I read in December, The Last of Her Kind, by Sigrid Nunez. Both are first person narratives of well-meaning white girls in the 70s, each of whom felt responsible for the death of a black person and struggled to come to terms with their guilt and white privilege. Both novels also involved left-wing radicals, rich people repudiating their class, and someone going to prison.

This is the first book I’ve read by Oates, so I don’t have grounds to compare this novel to her others. Reading two such similar books in close proximity has also blurred the distinctions between them, and neither stands out as an amazing book. While Black Girl / White Girl discusses issues related to race, it doesn’t ‘deal with’ race in the way I expect from a sociological background. Mostly what it presents is the fumbling self-absorption of a white person who is invested in the image of ‘doing the right thing’ but completely lacking in knowledge or preparation to actually do so. Of course, it’s not clear what the right thing would be, and contemporary standards for the racial self-awareness of white college students may not be those of the time period which the book portrays. One element that did ring true was the dynamic in the dormitory after racial slurs appeared; I have heard the aftermath of these incidents described by my students, and the pattern is frequently the same as that described by Oates.

I would give this book a 6/10. It was well-written, but predictable, and only touched the surface of elements that I would likely have found more engaging. I would be interested to hear the reactions of people of Oate’s generation to the characterization. Perhaps in the context of that time the book presents the racial issues in a direct and challenging way.