Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart is a 1990 novel by American novelist Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates

Joyce Carol Oates is an American author. Oates published her first book in 1963 and has since published over fifty novels, as well as many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction...

.

Plot summary

In Hammond, New York, in the early 1950s, a young girl named Iris Courtney and her black friend Jinx Fairchild are united by a murder that they commit in self-defense. From this central moment, this novel weaves out the stories of two families that intercross across divisions of race and class.

External links

• http://jco.usfca.edu/works/novels/bitter.html
• Book Review, The New York Times