![]() The book is one woman’s struggle to understand a life absent of the partnership that had sustained and defined her for nearly half a century. In A Widow’s Story: A Memoir, Oates writes about the sudden death of her husband Ray, to whom she was married for more than 47 years, and of the paralyzing months spent coming to terms with the terrible loss. 1972: Joyce Carol Oates and her husband Raymond Smith. The two were married after a three-month courtship. While studying in Wisconsin she met Raymond Smith. After receiving her bachelor’s degree, she earned her master’s in a single year at the University of Wisconsin. Joyce Carol Oates was valedictorian of her graduating class. When she was only 19, she won the “college short story” contest sponsored by Mademoiselle magazine. An excellent student, she contributed to her high school newspaper and won a scholarship to attend Syracuse University, where she majored in English. When she transferred to the high school in Lockport, she quickly distinguished herself. Oates uses the word “vertiginous” to describe the dizzying sensation of looking back on your life from a distance you can’t believe you’ve traveled. 1949: Joyce Carol Oates, pictured on Easter, in her hometown of Lockport, New York. It is strange, she says, to live so long that you are older than your own parents were when they died. When, at age 14, her grandmother provided her with her first typewriter, she began consciously preparing herself, “writing novel after novel” throughout high school and college. Although her parents had little education, they encouraged her ambitions. But young Joyce enjoyed the natural environment of farm country, and displayed a precocious interest in books and writing. Farm families worked desperately hard to sustain meager subsistence. The few industries the area enjoyed suffered frequent closures and layoffs. This rural area of upstate New York, straddling Niagara and Erie Counties, had been hit hard by the Great Depression. ![]() ![]() She grew up on her parents’ farm, outside the town, and went to the same one-room schoolhouse her mother had attended. Joyce Carol Oates was born in Lockport, New York.
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