Black Girl/White Girl Book

Read for my American Postmodernism class. This is a novel that attempts to demonstrate and examine the American college experience for a person of colour, yet as a white author Oates is careful not to adopt a false voice on behalf of black college students, but instead writes from the perspective of a white girl sharing a dorm with a black girl. What follows is a juxtaposition of the two, working as both a contrast and bonding for the two characters who are aware of their societal differences, and let this become the basis for their encounters.

I enjoyed this so much because I absolutely love campus novels, and only two chapters into the book I had already warmed to the voice and the setting. Yet studying this novel in light of my wider reading, which happened to be on structural and embedded racism in higher education, there was also a lesson to be taken from this which I value strongly in my continued interests in Black and African American literature. Whilst this is obviously not African American literature, it still adds something to the discourse of racism in American college education which is going continuously unnoticed as a result of the people who enforce it.

After this I'd love to read more of Oates' work because I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I would recommend for anybody interested in campus literature, and although it does attempt to be a part of the black experience narrative, I would recommend going straight to novels written by Black writers for a more stimulating look into that. Nevertheless, I wouldn't pass this book up because I'm really glad we were given this to read.