More frequently known for her fiction than for her poetry, Oates had her first collection of stories, By the North Gate, published in 1963. The title is taken from a poem by Rihaku in which the north gate is the boundary between civilization and savagery. The existence of savagery in civilized society is one of the predominant themes of both Oates's poetry and fiction. In all of her works, social form becomes merely a disguise for the undercurrents of psychological, and often physical, brutality. Since the publication of these stories (followed in 1964 by her first novel, With Shuddering Fall), Oates's critical acclaim has grown steadily.
Joyce Carol Oates was born in the small town of Lockport, New York, on 16 June 1938 and grew up in a rural setting nearby in Erie County. Together with her brother, Frederic, and sister, Lynn Ann, she was raised as a Roman Catholic in a home free from the depressing economic problems which plague so many of her fictional families. Her father, Frederic James Oates, was employed as a tool and die designer, while her mother, Caroline Bush Oates, ran the household.
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