The Sacrifice (Oates novel)
The Sacrifice is a 2015 novel by the American writer Joyce Carol Oates. Set in urban New Jersey in the 1980s and based on the real-life Tawana Brawley case, it follows a young Black woman, Sybilla, who alleges that she was kidnapped, assaulted, and left for dead by a group of white police officers. Despite evidence of deceit in Sybilla's story, her cause is taken up by an ambitious and unscrupulous civil rights activist and his lawyer brother. Following some of Oates's previous work, the novel explores themes of race, exploitation, and how  individuals can be turned into symbols. It received mixed to negative reviews from professional critics, who criticized its lack of nuance and empathy, though some reviews were more positive. Plot. On October 7, 1987, in Pascayne, New Jersey, a badly beaten young Black woman is discovered in the cellar of an abandoned factory. At the hospital, she is identified as Sybilla Frye, a 15-year-old girl who has been missing for the past several days. The hospital staff finds that feces has been smeared in her hair and racial slurs written in marker on her body. They note that , oddly, the slurs were written upside-down. Sybilla's mother, Ednetta, arrives at the hospital and demands that they release Sybilla into her custody. She refuses to allow a rape kit to be administered to Sybilla, but consents to a police interview on the condition that the police officer be a Black woman. Sybilla communicates to the assigned officer, a young Puerto Rican woman named Ines Iglesias, that she was abducted, raped, and left for dead by a group of five or six white police officers. As Sybilla is largely uncommunicative and Ednetta is hostile to Iglesias, the interview ends  quickly, and Ednetta insists on taking Sybilla home. Ednetta takes Sybilla to Sybilla's grandmother's house to hide and refuses to tell the police where she is. She tries to conceal the attack from Anis Schutt, her common-law husband who has harbored a deep hatred of the police since they killed his brother, and she rebuffs the entreaties of neighbors and civil rights lawyers to pursue the case against the police. A month after Sybilla was discovered, word of the alleged attack reaches the ears of Marus Mudrick, a Black preacher and prominent civil rights activist. Mudrick spots  an opportunity to capitalize on the crime, and reaches out to Ednetta and Sybilla offering to represent them and publicize their case. Ednetta and her daughter are hesitant, but eventually given in to Mudrick's charm. Mudrick and his brother Byron, a respectable lawyer with a milder temperament who somewhat resents Marus's success, quickly drum up outrage over the attack and the inaction of the Pascayne police. A rally that Mudrick convenes in Pascayne turns violent when Mudrick urges them to march on the city hall. In the ensuing chaos, Iglesias, who is attending the rally off-duty, is  injured, loses her service weapon, and is subsequently reassigned to a different division as punishment. In December, rookie police officer Jerold "Jere" Zahn kills himself after finding out that he has been let go from the force. Seizing on the news, Mudrick compels Sybilla to identify Zahn as one of her rapists. When the district attorney challenges the accusation, Mudrick accuses him of participating in the rape, too. Meanwhile, Mudrick has increasingly taken control of Ednetta and Sybilla's lives, moving them from their home and even confiscating a Rolex watch that Mike Tyson gave as a gift to Sybilla . At the height of the crusade, Mudrick is stabbed and nearly killed by an agent of one of his rivals, the militant leader of the Kingdom of Islam known as the Black Prince. A few months later, Sybilla has joined the Kingdom of Islam and the Black Prince has taken up her cause. In a series of flashbacks, it is implied that Sybilla and Ednetta concocted the story of the gang rape after Anis beat her brutally. At a rally for Sybilla organized by the Black Prince in Pascayne, Anis is stopped by the police. After hesitating, Anis shoots two  of them and is instantly killed by a barrage of return fire. Background. Joyce Carol Oates. Joyce Carol Oates is an American writer. Described as "America's foremost woman of letters" and known for her prolific output, she had written more than 40 novels before "The Sacrifice", some of which had dealt with issues of racism and misogyny. In the afterword to "The Sacrifice", Oates states that the novel is "strongly linked" to her 1969 novel "Them", which ends with the 1967 Detroit riots. Several of her previous books were based on real-life events, notably "Blonde", about Marilyn Monroe , and "Black Water", a "roman à clef" that parallels the Chappaquiddick incident. According to Alan Cheuse, "The Sacrifice" was published in the midst of a "national trauma on police and unarmed victims", and a subsequent novel by Oates, "Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars.", would also address racism and police violence. Tawana Brawley. On November 28, 1987, Tawana Brawley, a 15-year Black girl who had been missing for four days, was found, alive, in a plastic garbage bag outside an apartment where she had lived in Wappingers Falls in the U.S. state of New York. Dazed and mostly unresponsive, she  was smeared with feces and several racial slurs had been written on her body. In subsequent police interviews, Brawley indicated that she had been kidnapped by a group of white men, including one who appeared to be a police officer. Brawley's case was taken up and brought to national attention by civil rights activist Al Sharpton (assisted by lawyers Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason), who alleged a large-scale cover-up. A grand jury later concluded that Brawley fabricated her story, although Brawley continued to maintain that she was telling the truth. The plot of the novel  closely follows the Brawley case. Setting. The novel is set in the fictional town of Pascayne (based on Passaic) in northern New Jersey in the 1980s. After World War II, the cities of New Jersey were hit hard by deindustrialization, while at the same time the Black population of cities like Newark, a major city close to the novel's fictional setting, increased significantly. In July 1967, Newark saw five days of rioting after the beating of a Black cab driver by white police officers; over the course of the "most devastating riots in the history of New Jersey" twenty -six people were killed and millions of dollars of property was destroyed. The riots — referenced in the novel — left a legacy of distrust between the city's Black population and the mostly-white police force. The riots also hastened white flight from the city, and in their aftermath rising crime and urban blight contributed to Newark's status as "a symbol of America’s decaying cities". Themes. According to Roxane Gay, the novel's title refers to the fact that "nearly all of the characters sacrifice something — faith, hope, dignity, truth, justice." More literally, Alan Cheuse points out that the  detective Ines Iglesias wonders if she is going to be made a "'sacrifice' to public opinion", and at one point Marus tells Sybilla that she is "a race victim, a martyr, and a sacrifice". A central theme of the novel is how individual people and events are transformed into symbols and "are made to surrender their unique complexities as human beings", sometimes resulting in the obfuscation of facts in service of a larger purpose. According to "Kirkus Reviews", the novel raises the question of whether the truth or falsity of Sybilla's story makes "racism... any less true". In an  academic review, Eric K. Anderson links "The Sacrifice" to Oates's earlier novel "Them" and its "understanding of how specific incidents of racial conflict cannot be viewed only in isolation". Anderson also notes that the battle of wills between the Mudrick twins recalls similar dynamics between twins in previous novels by Oates. Reception. The critical reception of the novel was mixed, tending towards negative. Writing in "The New York Times", Roxane Gay offered measured praise for Oates's ambition but criticized the novel for its "lack of empathy" and "utter disregard for nuance", singling out inaccuracies in Oates's  rendition of African-American Vernacular English. "Kirkus Reviews" found that the multiple perspectives employed by the novel failed to offer "nuance or fresh insights", and concluded that "Oates revives an old scandal without making it new." A review of Oates's later novel "Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars." noted that Oates's engagement with "the subjects of race, violence and socioeconomic status" has had only "intermittent success" and that "The Sacrifice" in particular was "marred by a lack of empathy and worse". In a review for National Public Radio, Alan Cheuse was more positive, calling the novel a "raw and  earnest work of fiction [that] offers a mix of fiery drama and the cold bone truths of race as we all live it today." "The Washington Post"s Jon Michaud and "The Guardian"s Rose Tremain found the Mudrick brothers particularly compelling.