We Were the Mulvaneys (Further Reading)

Further Reading

• Cologne-Brookes, Gavin, Dark Eyes on America: The Novels of Joyce Carol Oates, Louisiana State University Press, 2005.

  This academic survey of Oates's works contains a lengthy analysis of We Were the Mulvaneys.

• Nussbaum, Carol, Sex and Social Justice, Oxford University Press, 1999.

  In addition to discussing the ways in which society treats sexual transgressions, this book refers to Oates's description of the gang rape of Della Rae Duncan in the novel as an example of ritualistic group assault behaviors.

• Oates, Joyce Carol, "Art and 'Victim Art,'" in Where I've Been, and Where I'm Going: Essays, Reviews, and Prose, Plume, 1999, pp. 69-75.

  Because she often includes acts of violence, particularly sexual violence, in her works, Oates is frequently accused of using victimization as a literary tool; here, she responds to this observation.

• Watanabe, Nancy Ann, Love Eclipsed: Joyce Carol Oates's Faustian Moral Vision, University Press of America, 1998.

  One of the most scholarly overviews of Oates's work published as of 2006, this book draws from a wide selection of literature throughout history — Shakespeare, Pope, Goethe, and Rousseau, to name just a few — to explain her oeuvre as one that greatly deserves its world-wide following.