Description
WHILE THE COMMON BELIEF is that "body horror" as a subgenre of horror fiction dates back to the 1970s, Joyce Carol Oates suggests that Medusa, the snake-haired gorgon in Greek mythology, is the "quintessential emblem of female body horror." In A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers, Oates has assembled a spectacular cast to explore this subgenre focusing on distortions to the human body in the most fascinating of ways.
"Should we know nothing of the female monsters of antiquity," Oates writes in her introduction to the volume, "still we would know that body horror in its myriad manifestations speaks most powerfully to women and girls. To be female is to inhabit a body that is by nature vulnerable to forcible invasion, susceptible to impregnation and repeated pregnancies, condemned to suffer childbirth, often in the past early deaths in childbirth and in the aftermath of childbirth."
Author: Joyce Carol Oates
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 08/22/2023
Pages: 272
Weight: 0.53lbs
Size: 8.03h x 4.96w x 0.94d
ISBN: 9781636141343
Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2023
Booklist 07/01/2023 pg. 30
Publishers Weekly 07/31/2023
About the Author
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of a number of works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. She is the editor of New Jersey Noir, Prison Noir, and Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers; and a recipient of the National Book Award, PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Humanities Medal, and a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.
"Should we know nothing of the female monsters of antiquity," Oates writes in her introduction to the volume, "still we would know that body horror in its myriad manifestations speaks most powerfully to women and girls. To be female is to inhabit a body that is by nature vulnerable to forcible invasion, susceptible to impregnation and repeated pregnancies, condemned to suffer childbirth, often in the past early deaths in childbirth and in the aftermath of childbirth."
Author: Joyce Carol Oates
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 08/22/2023
Pages: 272
Weight: 0.53lbs
Size: 8.03h x 4.96w x 0.94d
ISBN: 9781636141343
Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 07/15/2023
Booklist 07/01/2023 pg. 30
Publishers Weekly 07/31/2023
About the Author
Joyce Carol Oates is the author of a number of works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. She is the editor of New Jersey Noir, Prison Noir, and Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers; and a recipient of the National Book Award, PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Humanities Medal, and a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.