Earlier this year, I led a discussion for The Center for Fiction about Joyce Carol Oates’ story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” and I’m thrilled to be following that talk with another on Monday, August 10, on another favorite Oates story: “How I Contemplated the World From the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again” (there’s more subtitle—which… hang on).
Here’s the description at the Center for Fiction site:
Similar to her widely referenced 1966 story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?,” Joyce Carol Oates’s 1969 piece “How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again” focuses on a teenage girl navigating the pangs of adolescence and the threat of violence. Arguably, though, the latter tale is richer thematically and more daring in style and structure. Presented as notes for a school essay, “How I Contemplated” is comprised of twelve sections that offer glimpses into the world and mind of a fifteen-year-old girl, fitfully tracing her journey from a wealthy Detroit suburb to the perils of the inner city.
We will discuss the experience of reading this story, focusing on both its style (sometimes stream-of-consciousness) and modular structure, which requires readers to piece the narrative together like a jigsaw puzzle. We’ll also consider its recurrent and contrasting images as milestones that guide our reading journey and themes of class, gender, and race; family dysfunction; teenage angst and alienation; and the double-edged concept of “home.”
There’s still time to register—sign up here!