Editors Reads Verdict
Oates's most sustained achievement of her first decade — a gritty, socially precise portrait of Detroit's underclass across thirty years. The 1967 riot finale earns everything the novel has built.
What We Loved
- The social precision is extraordinary — Detroit's geography and class structure feel completely real
- The three Wendall perspectives give the novel range across gender, generation, and experience
- The 1967 riot sequence is one of the great set pieces in American fiction
Minor Drawbacks
- The length and density demand sustained engagement
- Some readers find Loretta's sections harder to inhabit than Jules or Maureen's
Key Takeaways
- → Poverty in America is not a temporary condition for most of those in it — it is a structural position reproduced across generations
- → The American dream is differently available to different bodies, and the Wendalls encounter its limits at every turn
- → Violence within families is not separate from the violence of the larger social order but an expression of it
| Author | Joyce Carol Oates |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Vanguard Press |
| Pages | 508 |
| Published | September 1, 1969 |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Literary Fiction, American Literature |
| Difficulty | Advanced |
| Best For | Serious readers of American literary fiction who want Oates at her most sustained and socially engaged. |
Detroit’s Underclass
them (the lowercase title is intentional) opens in 1937 with Loretta Wendall, sixteen years old, waking up to find the boy she slept with shot dead in her bed. The novel never quite recovers from this opening — not because it becomes more violent, but because the casual brutality of that first scene establishes the register that governs everything that follows. The Wendalls are people to whom things happen, and then more things, and the question is whether they have any agency within that.
Oates follows Loretta’s son Jules and daughter Maureen through the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Jules becomes a petty criminal with aspirations toward something bigger. Maureen becomes a student, then something darker. Both are intelligent, capable people trapped in a social structure that will not make room for them.
The Riot
The 1967 Detroit riot — one of the deadliest in American history, triggered by a police raid on an unlicensed drinking club — provides the novel’s climax. Oates wrote the book partly in response to the riot, which she witnessed at distance as a professor at the University of Windsor just across the Canadian border. The fiction is prefaced by an author’s note claiming the events are based on the letters and experiences of a real student — a device that blurs the boundary between novel and testimony.
them won the National Book Award in 1970. It remains Oates’s clearest statement of her central subject: what American violence does to American lives, particularly the lives of those for whom the country’s promises were never meant.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "them" about?
Three generations of the Wendall family — Loretta, her son Jules, her daughter Maureen — struggle through poverty, violence, and desire in Detroit from the 1930s to the 1967 riots. Oates's National Book Award winner traces the working-class American century through one family's attempt to survive it.
Who should read "them"?
Serious readers of American literary fiction who want Oates at her most sustained and socially engaged.
What are the key takeaways from "them"?
Poverty in America is not a temporary condition for most of those in it — it is a structural position reproduced across generations The American dream is differently available to different bodies, and the Wendalls encounter its limits at every turn Violence within families is not separate from the violence of the larger social order but an expression of it
Is "them" worth reading?
Oates's most sustained achievement of her first decade — a gritty, socially precise portrait of Detroit's underclass across thirty years. The 1967 riot finale earns everything the novel has built.
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