INTRO
“I consider tragedy the highest form of art.” Joyce Carol Oates reveals her very realist outlook though this quote, which she stated on a PBS interview in 2008. As an American Author from 1963, being a woman writer was overlooked, however, she managed to make a career out of something she started to love as a child. Throughout this speech, I will tell you about Joyce’s life, the book of hers that I read, and how she connects to what we’ve learned in English Lit thus far.

BODY 1. The Author
Joyce Carol Oates was born on June 16th on her parents' farm, outside the town, and went to the same one-room schoolhouse her mother had attended. This rural area of upstate New York, straddling Niagara and Erie Counties, had been hit hard by the Great Depression. The few industries the area enjoyed suffered frequent closures and layoffs. Farm families worked desperately hard to sustain meager subsistence. But young Joyce enjoyed the natural environment of farm country, and displayed an interest in books and writing. Although her parents had little education, they encouraged her ambitions. When, at age 14, her grandmother gave her her first typewriter, she began consciously preparing herself, "writing novel after novel" throughout high school and college, said American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies. Without the typewriter from her grandmother, she may not have even started writing seriously.

When she transferred to the high school in Lockport, she quickly distinguished herself. An excellent student, she contributed to her high school newspaper and won a scholarship to attend Syracuse University, where she majored in English. When she was only 19, she won the "college short story" contest sponsored by Mademoiselle Magazine. Joyce Carol Oates was valedictorian of her graduating class. After receiving her BA degree, she earned her Master's in a single year at the University of Wisconsin. While studying there she met Raymond Smith. The two were married after only three months of dating.

In 1962, the couple settled in Detroit, Michigan. Joyce taught at the University of Detroit Mercy and had a front-row seat for the social turmoil engulfing America's cities in the 1960s. These violent realities informed much of her early fiction. Her first novel, With Shuddering Fall, was published when she was 28.

In 1968, Joyce took a job at the University of Windsor, and the couple moved across the Detroit River to Windsor, in the Canadian province of Ontario. In the ten years that followed, Joyce Carol Oates published new books at the extraordinary rate of two or three per year, while teaching full-time. Many of her novels sold well; her short stories and critical essays solidified her reputation. Despite some critical reviews about her phenomenal productivity, Oates had become one of the most respected and honored writers in the United States though only in her thirties.

While still in Canada, Oates and her husband started a small press and began to publish a literary magazine, The Ontario Review. They continued these activities after 1978, when they moved to Princeton, New Jersey. Since 1978, Joyce Carol Oates has taught in the creative writing program at Princeton University, where she has mentored numerous young writers, including Jonathan Safran Foer. Her literary work continued, at exactly the same pace, while working a strenuous job.

Through her writing, it’s apparent that Oates’ doesn’t carry a definite style, as described by neh.gov. By many, she is considered to be a realist, a social critic who focuses on contemporary events and issues in fiction and essays, and one brave enough to test classical myths and literary conventions beyond the limits of most authors from her time. Also, she draws upon her complex and varied background in her fiction, including characters who struggle to find a place in their changing and threatening world. Oates’ often satirizes doctors, preachers, and lawyers because their professions are ‘men’s’ professions.

In the early 1980s, Oates surprised critics and readers with a series of novels, beginning with Bellefluer, in which she reinvented the conventions of Gothic fiction, using them to re-imagine whole stretches of American history. Just as suddenly, she returned, at the end of the decade, to her familiar realistic ground with a series of purposeful family chronicles, including You Must Remember This, and Because It Is Bitter, and its sequel Because It Is My Heart. The novels Solstice and Marya: A Life also date from this period, and use the materials of her family and childhood to create moving studies of the female experience. In addition to her literary fiction, she has written a series of experimental suspense novels under the pseudonyms Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelley.

Through all of this, she was still fascinated by the literary past. Oates’ tried imitating the works of many, including her major influence, Emily Dickinson, who was a long-time model for many women writers in the US. As of this writing, Joyce Carol Oates has written 56 novels, which include a group about her own imaginative view of 19th century conventions with emphasis on constraints placed on women as writers and heroines, over 30 collections of short stories, eight volumes of poetry, plays, innumerable essays and book reviews, as well as longer nonfiction works on literary subjects ranging from the poetry of Emily Dickinson, said usfca.edu in an article about Oates, and the fiction of Dostoyevsky and James Joyce, to studies of the gothic and horror genres, and on such non-literary subjects as the painter George Bellows and the boxer Mike Tyson. In 1996, Oates received the PEN/Malamud Award for "a lifetime of literary achievement."

In a review of ‘The Accursed’ by Stephen King from March 14th, 2013, he states that, ‘Joyce Carol Oates has written what may be the world’s first postmodern Gothic novel…it’s the modern teenager set in Dracula’s castle.’ With Oates’ love of the dark side and showing the struggles of real people, King said that the over-exaggeration and length of the book fits her and her story perfectly.

In my opinion, I agree with his statement about attention to detail fitting the part. I’ve noticed that I scan through my books to try and catch speaking lines, and skip all the detail. However, with the book I read by Oates, I found that the details are what made the book good. I can’t imagine what her book would have been without the number of pages that were purely minor details.

Her husband, Raymond Smith, died in 2008, shortly before the publication of her 32nd collection of short stories, Dear Husband. The following year, Oates married Professor Charles Gross, of the Psychology Department and Neuroscience Institute at Princeton. Achievement.org said, “In the months following Raymond Smith's death, and before she met Dr. Gross, she suffered from severe depression and suicidal thoughts.” She described this experience vividly in the memoir, A Widow's Tale, published in 2011. Today, Joyce Carol Oates continues to live and write in Princeton, New Jersey, where she is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at Princeton University.

2. The Book
The book I chose to read by Oates was Big Mouth & Ugly Girl. The book takes place in Rocky River, New York, a made up suburb of New York City.

As for characters, there are two that the book revolves around. The first being Matt Donaghy. He has always been a big mouth, but it’s never gotten him into trouble – until the day that he is accused of threatening to blow up his school. The second, Ursula Riggs, who has always been an ugly girl. A loner with fierce, starring eyes, Ursula has no time for pretty high school stuff like friends and dating, or at least that’s what she tells herself. Even though Ursula is content minding her own business, she is the only one who knows what Matt really said, and must put her social anxiety aside in order to help him.

On top of Matt being falsely accused of bomb threats and Ursula forcing herself to speak up for the good of another person, a couple more problems occur. A man vs. self-conflict starts once Matt realizes it’s going to be harder to clear his name than he thought. With only one person on his side, Matt has suicidal thoughts in a few parts of the book, which is understandable considering how hard he has tried to convince everyone of what he really said, and how few people end up believing him. The next, a man vs. man-conflict, happens at the end of the book, directly after Matt’s name was cleared. His friends who were with him when he made the alleged bomb threats wouldn’t tell the police or investigators what he really said. Matt had to decide whether or not to become friends with them again after his name is cleared, and when he decides not to, they don’t understand what they did so wrong.

The biggest theme in the book would have to be ‘Think about what you said, before you say it.’ All of us have been told this, but most of us have never actually thought about doing it. This book made me think a little more about what I say, who I say it to, and what I mean by it. This theme is drug out the entire book, ending on the note of Matt asking himself, ‘What if I would have never said that...’ Another, smaller theme, would be ‘Stay true to yourself.’ As Matt and Ursula go through their young lives, they are both tested by the people who surround them, and are both challenged to remain themselves and stay true to their character.

The rising action of the book is when Matt gets questioned at school for alleged bomb threats to the school. The most exciting part, the climax, of the book was when Matt was arrested and suspended from school because nobody believe that he wasn’t serious when he said it. The falling action is Matt returning to school and Ursula convincing the principal that kids always say things but don’t mean it. The resolution is when the entire case is dropped and Matt and Ursula begin dating.

A few positive aspects of the book were that the growing love story between Matt and Ursula kept me interested, even though it was really predictable. In the same way, I liked how she ended the book on a happy note after everything each of them had been through. Personally, I think Oates did a nice job on the suspenseful and interesting plot, considering I usually wouldn’t grab for a book like this to read. However, I hated how that book was written in both first and third person, and told in email and narration form. By Oates doing this, she only let us know what was in Ursula’s head, and what exactly Matt was doing, but it didn’t go both ways, which bothered me.

3. The Connection
Joyce Carol Oates can connect to this class and what we have covered in many ways. First, she used pseudonyms, Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelley, just as Benjamin Franklin had. They both used this fake name on their writing to hide their identities as writers.

Next, Oates tried to challenge myths, such as ‘My Sister, My Love,’ which tries to alter Naomi Wolf’s beauty myth. Even though she didn’t not believe what people have come up with before, she thought that there was more cold hard facts behind what she came up with.

Another connection I found was that of when the Onondaga tribe said in their Earth on the Turtle’s back myth that when the tiny piece of earth fell on the turtle’s back, it immediately began to grow and grow until it became the whole world. I think this connects to Oates and how when her grandmother gave her the typewriter for her 14th birthday, she instantly started typing novel after novel and really setting the stage for what is now her life made by writing.

Finally, Oates’ feels very strongly about the role women played in old times. Godasiyo, the only woman chief of any native tribes we learned about, must have felt the same way, considering she was the only woman chief we learned about. Just as it was uncommon for a woman to be a chief, it was weird for one to be an author also, in Oates’ time.

CONCLUSION
I’ve just informed you about Oates’ life, Big Mouth & Ugly Girl, and how she connects to our class. Although many look at her as a realist, focusing on the problems many are facing each and every day, Oates’ brings much more to the table. She has proved that women can be more than housewives, and that they can make for amazing authors.