The first book I've read by Oates where the protagonist isn't upper middle class white. In this case, Iris Courtney, a girl from a lower middle class family in Western New York, is the main character. Her mother and father are a good-looking young couple who live life for today, and never worry about tomorrow.
Iris is a girl who never fits in, and learns early on to be independent, as, after her mother divorces her father, her mother goes rapidly downhill, and Iris must look after herself and her mother.
This fiction is about how a person can force themselves not to feel, when life is too painful, and mold themselves into a walking-talking human with little feeling left inside. ( )

I registered this book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14096627

I first read this several years ago. I remember being affected by the feelings of young Iris Courtney. I felt that Oates expressed the feelings many children have, of being left out, for different reasons. I identified with some of those feelings.

I didn't as much get that feeling this time around. However, I found something different.

Iris is a loner from the wrong side of the tracks. She is about 12 when her story begins here, a good student but not a "participant". She has self-absorbed parents: Persia, whose beauty has taken her places, and Duke, whose charm has slid him by some difficulties. Iris is a bit of a dreamer, too. I identified with her aloneness, her ability to entertain herself and to imagine a different life.

Her life changes dramatically a few years later, when she is linked with Jinx Fairchild, a popular black boy, through a tragic incident. The link is known only to the two of them, because of the nature of the incident and because of the racism inherent in the population of the town.

Their shared experience follows them both through the years and into adulthood, and affects almost everything they choose to do in their lives, whether consciously or not. It was this effect, and the more pervasive effects of fundamental institutionalized racism, that follow them both unrelentingly. ( )

Vi er i USA på 1950-tallet og alle livstema er der;oppvekst, samliv, bedrag, rus, fasade, vekst og fall. Rase, et drap, frykt og skam er tråden gjennom boken. Vi følger ungdommene Iris og Jinx sine ulike veier fra et ulykkelig møte til liv som kan lage størst mulig avstand, men som alltid følger dem. Tiden tar alle igjen, livet treffer, livet åpner og lukker. Når vi i 2019 møter rasismen i nyheter og grufulle hendelser, er det som om tiden i boken har stått stille i 70 år og frykten og hatet har bestått. Ingenting har drept mer enn uenigheter om religion og heri har mange hatende blandet inn såkalt rase. Før vi erkjenner hatets rot som er frykt, vil intet endres. Så også for Iris og Jinx og i deres liv.

'No one is so close to me as you. No one is so close to us as we are to each other', 19 Sept. 2012
By
sally tarbox

This review is from: BECAUSE IT IS BITTER, AND BECAUSE IT IS MY HEART [Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart ] BY Oates, Joyce Carol(Author)Paperback 30-Mar-1991
The book opens with the brutal murder of a 'trailer trash' youth in 1950s upstate New York. Two people know something about it: teenagers Iris Courtney (white) and Jinx Fairchild (black). The author introduces us particularly to the former: her parents and uncle just come alive with Ms Oates' amazing writing. The racist feel of the era is also constantly with us, affecting every interchange between the two groups.
For me, it kind of fell apart in the final third. Iris embarks on a totally different and unrelated lifestyle. She undergoes a traumatic event which I couldn't see the relevance of.
But certainly brilliant and descriptive writing. ( )

I never felt connected to the characters and didn't get past 100 pages and it's not the kind of book I want to be reading now.