Marya: A Life Summary
Joyce Carol Oates

Marya: A Life Summary

One of Oates's most autobiographical novels, Marya traces the journey of the child Marya from her origins in the communities of Innisfail and Shaheen Falls in upstate New York to successful academic career, and a career as translator at the international level, and finally, back home as she decides to search for the alcoholic mother who abandoned her to a paternal aunt and uncle after her father was murdered. The structure enables Oates to address issues that have concerned her in much of her fiction: the defenselessness of a child, particularly a female child; the conformity and rebellion of the adolescent and the violence of adolescent behavior; the place of the brilliant, sensitive person in an ordinary world; the struggle with religious faith; and the politics of the academic world. While Marya pulls together many of Oates's themes, it also reflects attention to issues...

(read more from the Short Guide)