Wideman, John Edgar - Joyce Carol Oates (review date 27 March 1997)
Joyce Carol Oates (review date 27 March 1997)
SOURCE: "Troubles I've Seen," in New York Review of Books, Vol. XLIV, No. 5, March 27, 1997, pp. 39-40.
[Oates is a noted author, educator, and critic; her works include We Were the Mulvaneys. In the following review, she offers a favorable assessment of The Cattle Killing.]
In a probate-office storage vault in Abbeville, South Carolina, an elderly white ex-history professor is showing a black writer from Massachusetts, whose slave ancestors lived in the Abbeville region, itemized documents relating to the sale and possession of slaves. The black writer is grateful for the historian's generous assistance (though the historian has never met the writer before, he has volunteered to spend several days with him), and so it comes as a considerable shock to the writer that, as he gazes down at the back of the historian's head, he feels an "ice-cold wave of anger [at him]…. at the back of...
[The entire page is 3103 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
Related Topics
