Reading Nostalgia, Anger, and the Home in Joyce Carol Oates’s Foxfire

• Main Author: Heather A. Hillsburg
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: University of San Francisco 2014-07-01
• Series: Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies
• Online Access: http://repository.usfca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=jcostudies

This article draws from Svetlana Boym’s concept of reflective nostalgia to explore the intersections between violence, memory, and the home in Joyce Carol Oates’s novel Foxfire. Through reflective nostalgia, Maddy is able to link the abuse she and her friends endure to various iterations of the home. Reflective nostalgia also allows Maddy to draw connections between anger and the domestic realm, and to write the members of FOXFIRE back into dominant narratives that largely exclude their lived experiences. Ultimately, this paper argues that because nostalgia often centers on the home, it is ideally suited to foreground the untenable nature of idyllic or hegemonic constructions of the domestic realm.