The Odd Couple

A white woman looks back at the deadly racial tensions of her college years.

BLACK GIRL/WHITE GIRL

A Novel

By Joyce Carol Oates

Ecco/HarperCollins. 272 pp. $25.95

Joyce Carol Oates has a reputation for controversy. She has taken on some of the most iconic themes in American culture: serial killers, movie stars and politicians, among other subjects. Predators and victims abound, and her latest novel, Black Girl/White Girl, is no exception.

Two girls were roommates at a liberal arts college outside Philadelphia, and their differences were clear, in terms of class, culture and identity. But there were similarities between them, too: They were both born in April 1956. One ground her teeth; the other used to. They both had a formidable father in public life. They had co-dependent mothers -- one was into substance abuse; the other was into food. One girl was rich; the other was not.

And now one is dead.

Narrator Genna Hewett-Meade is investigating the death of her black roommate, Minette Swift. Minette died on the campus of Schuyler College at the age of 19, in 1975, under questionable circumstances. As the novel opens, Genna is launching an inquiry, 15 years later, to establish the truth.

Through a series of flashbacks, Genna reveals her privileged background. Her ancestors owned the land the college is standing on. Her great-grandfather was a Quaker abolitionist and one of the wealthiest men in Philadelphia. Her father is a criminal lawyer, involved with anti-Vietnam protesters. Genna is acutely aware of her heritage and proud of a house on campus that was used to hide escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad. But she recalls how, on Orientation Day, during a tour of the house, Minette Swift didn't seem impressed. In fact, Minette's father, the Rev. Virgil Swift, complains that the tour guide isn't telling the story correctly -- her version about the heroic whites saving the blacks leaves out the black activists involved.

Minette is like her father: self-righteous and outspoken. She grew up in her father's congregation, the Temple Vale of the World Tabernacle of Jesus Christ, in Washington, D.C. She calls rock-and-roll "the devil's music" and describes jazz as "low-life." She quotes scripture regularly and stomps loudly on the floor of her dormitory when her fellow residents play Bob Dylan too loud.

The other students don't like Minette. And though she shares a room with Genna, she isn't friendly. Instead, she's brusque and superior. Shopkeepers and choir directors don't like Minette either. She's too brown-skinned, too working class, too holier than thou.

Minette is having trouble keeping up her grades. As a merit scholar, she is under pressure to maintain a C average, and she's struggling. Genna tries hard to befriend her, even pretending that her own grades are suffering.

But Minette has a problem beyond bad grades: She's being harassed because of her blackness, or so she says. There's a broken window in their room. One of her books is mutilated. She stops using the shower, claiming someone has put broken glass in it. Her toothbrush and towels are defiled. As the harassment escalates, Genna makes it clear just who the perpetrator is. But that revelation puts Minette's plight in a radically different light and turns the subject of racism on its head.

In a recent interview, Oates talked about Black Girl/White Girl as a metaphor for race in America. "We are room-mates with one another," she said, "but how well do we know one another?" If Gemma and Minette are metaphorical, then Oates's message is that liberal whites aren't dealing with blacks honestly; they're compromising themselves and covering up black pathology in order to assuage white guilt. And what are blacks doing? According to this trajectory, they're going insane.

Oates is deliberately provocative with this intellectual exercise about America's racial dilemma, but where is she going? She seems to suggest that the left is deluding itself, but surely the left is more nuanced than this when it comes to race, and we'd expect a novel to explore that nuance rather than oversimplify it. Oates dares to ask, how well do we know each other? But in her attempt to explore the duality of American racism, her truth is one-dimensional, even as it makes for fascinating reading. ·

Lisa Page is a visiting professor teaching English and creative writing at George Washington University.