The Sacrifice (Oates novel)

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The Sacrifice
The Sacrifice (Oates novel).jpg
AuthorJoyce Carol Oates
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
PublisherEcco Press
Publication date
2015
Media typePrint (hardback & paperback)
Pages309 pp
ISBN978-0062332981
OCLC945404090

The Sacrifice is a 2015 novel by the American writer Joyce Carol Oates. Set in urban New Jersey in the 1980s and based on the real-life Tawana Brawley case, it follows a young Black woman, Sybilla, who alleges that she was kidnapped, assaulted, and left for dead by a group of white police officers. Despite evidence of deceit in Sybilla's story, her cause is taken up by an ambitious and unscrupulous civil rights activist and his lawyer brother. Following some of Oates's previous work, the novel explores themes of race, exploitation, and how individuals can be turned into symbols. It received mixed to negative reviews from professional critics, who criticized its lack of nuance and empathy, though some reviews were more positive.

Plot[]

Semi-abandoned buildings in Newark in the mid-1990s. The Sacrifice takes place in a similar setting.

On October 7, 1987, in Pascayne, New Jersey, a badly beaten young Black woman is discovered in the cellar of an abandoned factory. At the hospital, she is identified as Sybilla Frye, a 15-year-old girl who has been missing for the past several days. The hospital staff finds that feces has been smeared in her hair and racial slurs written in marker on her body. They note that, oddly, the slurs were written upside-down.

Sybilla's mother, Ednetta, arrives at the hospital and demands that they release Sybilla into her custody. She refuses to allow a rape kit to be administered to Sybilla, but consents to a police interview on the condition that the police officer be a Black woman. Sybilla communicates to the assigned officer, a young Puerto Rican woman named Ines Iglesias, that she was abducted, raped, and left for dead by a group of five or six white police officers. As Sybilla is largely uncommunicative and Ednetta is hostile to Iglesias, the interview ends quickly, and Ednetta insists on taking Sybilla home.

Ednetta takes Sybilla to Sybilla's grandmother's house to hide and refuses to tell the police where she is. She tries to conceal the attack from Anis Schutt, her common-law husband who has harbored a deep hatred of the police since they killed his brother, and she rebuffs the entreaties of neighbors and civil rights lawyers to pursue the case against the police.

A month after Sybilla was discovered, word of the alleged attack reaches the ears of Marus Mudrick, a Black preacher and prominent civil rights activist. Mudrick spots an opportunity to capitalize on the crime, and reaches out to Ednetta and Sybilla offering to represent them and publicize their case. Ednetta and her daughter are hesitant, but eventually given in to Mudrick's charm.

Mudrick and his brother Byron, a respectable lawyer with a milder temperament who somewhat resents Marus's success, quickly drum up outrage over the attack and the inaction of the Pascayne police. A rally that Mudrick convenes in Pascayne turns violent when Mudrick urges them to march on the city hall. In the ensuing chaos, Iglesias, who is attending the rally off-duty, is injured, loses her service weapon, and is subsequently reassigned to a different division as punishment.

In December, rookie police officer Jerold "Jere" Zahn kills himself after finding out that he has been let go from the force. Seizing on the news, Mudrick compels Sybilla to identify Zahn as one of her rapists. When the district attorney challenges the accusation, Mudrick accuses him of participating in the rape, too. Meanwhile, Mudrick has increasingly taken control of Ednetta and Sybilla's lives, moving them from their home and even confiscating a Rolex watch that Mike Tyson gave as a gift to Sybilla. At the height of the crusade, Mudrick is stabbed and nearly killed by an agent of one of his rivals, the militant leader of the Kingdom of Islam known as the Black Prince.

A few months later, Sybilla has joined the Kingdom of Islam and the Black Prince has taken up her cause. In a series of flashbacks, it is implied that Sybilla and Ednetta concocted the story of the gang rape after Anis beat her brutally. At a rally for Sybilla organized by the Black Prince in Pascayne, Anis is stopped by the police. After hesitating, Anis shoots two of them and is instantly killed by a barrage of return fire.

Background[]

Joyce Carol Oates[]

Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Described as "America's foremost woman of letters"[1] and known for her prolific output, she had written more than 40 novels before The Sacrifice,[1] some of which had dealt with issues of racism and misogyny.[2] In the afterword to The Sacrifice, Oates states that the novel is "strongly linked" to her 1969 novel Them,[3] which ends with the 1967 Detroit riots.[4] Several of her previous books were based on real-life events, notably Blonde, about Marilyn Monroe, and Black Water, a roman à clef that parallels the Chappaquiddick incident.[5][6] According to Alan Cheuse, The Sacrifice was published in the midst of a "national trauma on police and unarmed victims",[7] and a subsequent novel by Oates, , would also address racism and police violence.[4]

Tawana Brawley[]

On November 28, 1987, Tawana Brawley, a 15-year Black girl who had been missing for four days, was found, alive, in a plastic garbage bag outside an apartment where she had lived in Wappingers Falls in the U.S. state of New York. Dazed and mostly unresponsive, she was smeared with feces and several racial slurs had been written on her body. In subsequent police interviews, Brawley indicated that she had been kidnapped by a group of white men, including one who appeared to be a police officer. Brawley's case was taken up and brought to national attention by civil rights activist Al Sharpton (assisted by lawyers Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason), who alleged a large-scale cover-up. A grand jury later concluded that Brawley fabricated her story,[8] although Brawley continued to maintain that she was telling the truth.[9] The plot of the novel closely follows the Brawley case.[10]

Setting[]

The novel is set in the fictional town of Pascayne (based on Passaic) in northern New Jersey in the 1980s.[7][10] After World War II, the cities of New Jersey were hit hard by deindustrialization, while at the same time the Black population of cities like Newark, a major city close to the novel's fictional setting, increased significantly.[11]: 3  In July 1967, Newark saw five days of rioting after the beating of a Black cab driver by white police officers; over the course of the "most devastating riots in the history of New Jersey" twenty-six people were killed and millions of dollars of property was destroyed.[11]: 98  The riots — referenced in the novel[12] — left a legacy of distrust between the city's Black population and the mostly-white police force.[13] The riots also hastened white flight from the city, and in their aftermath rising crime and urban blight contributed to Newark's status as "a symbol of America’s decaying cities".[14]

Themes[]

According to Roxane Gay, the novel's title refers to the fact that "nearly all of the characters sacrifice something — faith, hope, dignity, truth, justice."[10] More literally, Alan Cheuse points out that the detective Ines Iglesias wonders if she is going to be made a "'sacrifice' to public opinion",[7] and at one point Marus tells Sybilla that she is "a race victim, a martyr, and a sacrifice".[12] A central theme of the novel is how individual people and events are transformed into symbols and "are made to surrender their unique complexities as human beings", sometimes resulting in the obfuscation of facts in service of a larger purpose.[12] According to Kirkus Reviews, the novel raises the question of whether the truth or falsity of Sybilla's story makes "racism... any less true".[15] In an academic review, Eric K. Anderson links The Sacrifice to Oates's earlier novel Them and its "understanding of how specific incidents of racial conflict cannot be viewed only in isolation".[12] Anderson also notes that the battle of wills between the Mudrick twins recalls similar dynamics between twins in previous novels by Oates.[12]

Reception[]

The critical reception of the novel was mixed, tending towards negative. Writing in The New York Times, Roxane Gay offered measured praise for Oates's ambition but criticized the novel for its "lack of empathy" and "utter disregard for nuance", singling out inaccuracies in Oates's rendition of African-American Vernacular English.[10] Kirkus Reviews found that the multiple perspectives employed by the novel failed to offer "nuance or fresh insights", and concluded that "Oates revives an old scandal without making it new."[15] A review of Oates's later novel noted that Oates's engagement with "the subjects of race, violence and socioeconomic status" has had only "intermittent success" and that The Sacrifice in particular was "marred by a lack of empathy and worse".[4]

In a review for National Public Radio, Alan Cheuse was more positive, calling the novel a "raw and earnest work of fiction [that] offers a mix of fiery drama and the cold bone truths of race as we all live it today."[7] The Washington Post's Jon Michaud and The Guardian's Rose Tremain found the Mudrick brothers particularly compelling.[5][2]

References[]

  1. ^ a b Hoby, Hermione (9 January 2016). "Joyce Carol Oates: 'People think I write quickly, but I actually don't'". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  2. ^ a b Tremain, Rose (12 January 2015). "The Sacrifice by Joyce Carol Oates review – gripping and powerful". The Guardian. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  3. ^ Oates, Joyce Carol (2015). "Afterword". The Sacrifice. Ecco Press. p. 310.
  4. ^ a b c Johnston, Bret Anthony (9 June 2020). "Joyce Carol Oates Takes On Racism and Grief in Her New Novel". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  5. ^ a b Michaud, Jon (29 January 2015). "Book review: 'The Sacrifice,' by Joyce Carol Oates, inspired by Tawana Brawley case". The Washington Post. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  6. ^ Oates, Joyce Carol (24 October 2003). "Off the Page: Joyce Carol Oates". The Washington Post (Interview). Interviewed by Carole Burns. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  7. ^ a b c d Cheuse, Alan (26 December 2014). "Joyce Carol Oates Wades Into Troubled Waters With 'The Sacrifice'". NPR. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  8. ^ "Evidence Points to Deceit by Brawley". The New York Times. 27 September 1988. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  9. ^ Yardley, Jim (3 December 1997). "After a Decade, Brawley Reappears and Repeats Charges". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  10. ^ a b c d Gay, Roxane (30 January 2015). "'The Sacrifice,' by Joyce Carol Oates". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  11. ^ a b Mumford, Kevin (2007). Newark: A History of Race, Rights, and Riots in America. New York University Press. ISBN 9780814795637.
  12. ^ a b c d e Anderson, Eric K. (2015). "Review of The Sacrifice". Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies. 2. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  13. ^ Rojas, Rick; Atkinson, Khorri (11 July 2017). "Five Days of Unrest That Shaped, and Haunted, Newark". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  14. ^ Rojas, Rick (8 August 2017). "A Revival Comes to Newark, but Some Worry It's 'Not for Us'". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
  15. ^ a b "The Sacrifice". Kirkus Reviews. 5 November 2014. Retrieved 11 February 2022.
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