skip to main content

CHILDREN AS COMMODITIES IN THE AMERICAN SUBURBAN HOME: JOYCE CAROL OATES'S ADAPTATION OF THE RAMSEY CASE IN "MY SISTER, MY LOVE"

Vol.10, Issue 2, 2024, pp. 247-263 Full text

Crossmark logo

DOI: https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.24.2.2
Web of Science: 001379776600004

Author:
Barbara Miceli https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5152-4347

Affiliation: University of Gdańsk, Gdańsk, Poland 011dv8m48

Abstract
Joyce Carol Oates's My Sister, My Love is a fictional memoir inspired by the unsolved murder of JonBenét Ramsey. The novel, told from the perspective of the victim's brother, satirizes the exploitation of children in beauty pageants and the superficiality of suburban life. Through a counter-memory narrative, Oates sheds light on the hidden abuse endured by children, revealing the dark underbelly of a seemingly perfect family. The novel serves as a powerful critique of societal pressures and the devastating consequences for young victims.

Keywords: Joyce Carol Oates, children exploitation, Ramsey Case, American suburbs

Article history:
Submitted: 24 September 2024
Reviewed: 1 October 2024
Accepted: 3 October 2024
Published: 22 December 2024

Citation (APA):
Miceli, B. (2024). Children as Commodities in the American Suburban Home: Joyce Carol Oates's Adaptation of the Ramsey Case in "My Sister, My Love". English Studies at NBU, 10(2), 247-263. https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.24.2.2

Copyright © 2024 Barbara Miceli

This open access article is published and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. If you want to use the work commercially, you must first get the authors' permission.

Funding:
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

References
Alexander, C., & McMaster, J. (2005). The Child Writer from Austen to Woolf. Cambridge University Press.

Allen, M. (1976). The Necessary Blankness, Women in Major Fiction of the Sixties. University Press of Illinois.

Arcana, J. (1979). Our Mother's Daughters. Shameless Hussy Press.

Bakhtin, M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination. Texas University Press.

Blaffer Hrdy, S. (1999). Mother Nature: History of Mothers, Infants, and Natural Selection. Pantheon Books.

Douglas, J. E., Olshaker, M. (2000). The Cases that Haunt Us. Scribner.

Farnham, M., & Lundberg, F. (1947). Modern Woman: The Lost Sex. Harper & Brothers Publishers.

Foley, D. (2011, September 27). Joyce Carol Oates on her Fictional Version of the JonBenet Ramsey Murder. Newark Star-Ledger. http://dylanmfoley.blogspot.com/2011/09/joyce-carol-oates-on-her-fictional.html

Hodges, A. G. (1998). A Mother Gone Bad: The Hidden Confession of JonBenét's Killer. Village House.

Johnson, G. (1998). Joyce Carol Oates: Invisible Writer. Plume.

Katz, C. (2011). Accumulation, Excess, Childhood: Toward a Countertopography of Risk and Waste. Documents d'Analisi Geografica, 57(1), 47-60. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/dag.806

Katz, C. (2012). Just Managing: American Middle-Class Parenthood in Insecure Times. In R. Heiman, C. Freeman, & M. Liechty (Eds.), The Global Middle Classes: Theorizing through Ethnography (pp. 169-188). SAR Press.

Klein, M. (1998). Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works 1921-1945. Vintage.

Lipsitz, G. (2001). Time Passages: Collective Memory and American Popular Culture. University of Minnesota Press.

Oates, J. C. (1999, June 24). The Mystery of JonBenét Ramsey. New York Review of Books. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1999/06/24/the-mystery-of-jonbenet-ramsey

Oates, J. C. (2008). My Sister, My Love. Harper Collins.

Parker, R. (1995). Mother Love/Mother Hate: The Power of Maternal Ambivalence. Basic Books.

Pickering, S. J. (1974). The Short Stories of Joyce Carol Oates. Georgia Review, 28(2), 218-226.

Ramsey, J., & Ramsey, P. (2001). The Death of Innocence. Onyx.

Ricoeur, P. (1985). Time and Narrative. University Press of Chicago.

Schiller, L. (1999). Perfect Murder, Perfect Town: JonBenét and the City of Boulder. Harper Collins.

Shields, D. (2010). Reality Hunger. A Manifesto. A. Knopf. https://doi.org/10.1353/wlt.2010.0041

Smith, C. (1999). Death of a Little Princess: The Tragic Story of the Murder of JonBenét Ramsey. St. Martin's Press.

Thomas, S. (2000). JonBenét: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation. St. Martin's Press.


Yagoda, B. (2009). Memoir, a History. Riverhead Books.

Zaretsky, N. (2007). No Direction Home: The American Family and the Fear of National Decline 1968-1980. University Press of North Carolina. https://doi.org/10.5149/9780807867808_zaretsky



Review:

1. Reviewer's name: Name undisclosed
Review Content: Undisclosed
Review Verified on Publons

2. Reviewer's name: Name Undisclosed
Review Content: Undisclosed
Review Verified on Publons

Handling Editor: Stan Bogdanov, New Bulgarian University
Verified Editor Record on Publons


Article Metrics