Joyce Carol Oates’s “How I Contemplated the World from the Detroit House of Correction and Began My Life Over Again” with Art Taylor (Virtual)

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.

The discussion will focus on the experience of reading this story, examining both its style (sometimes stream-of-consciousness) and modular structure, which requires readers to piece the narrative together like a jigsaw puzzle. The analysis will also consider its recurrent and contrasting images as milestones that guide the reading journey and themes of class, gender, and race; family dysfunction; teenage angst and alienation; and the double-edged concept of “home.”