Joyce Carol Oates, Zombie

Hannah Spruce (The University of Leicester)

Ed. by Kerry Myler, Newman University
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 3.2.4: American (US) Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Emory Elliott (University of California, Riverside), Dale Enggass (University of Utah), Christopher Hugh Gair (University of Glasgow), Matthew Hofer (University of New Mexico), Stephen E. Meats (Pittsburg State University), Kerry Myler (Newman University), Justin Parks (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway), Nick Selby (University of East Anglia)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1995

Places

United States (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

Zombie (1995) is Joyce Carol Oates’s twenty-sixth novel. In this graphically violent contemporary gothic epistolary, Oates recounts the banal circumstances, many structural, that enable a serial killer to target, abduct, and murder victims in Detroit in the mid-1990s.

Context: Jeffrey Dahmer

Zombie is loosely based on the crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer (1960–1994), a sex offender and serial killer arrested in Milwaukee in 1991. Between 1978 and 1991, Dahmer raped, murdered, dismembered, and cannibalised some of his victims. Dahmer’s targets were largely of African American, Latino, and Southeast Asian heritage. While the racialised nature of Dahmer’s crimes …

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2338 words

Citation: Spruce, Hannah. "Zombie". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 June 2021 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=12198, accessed 25 April 2024.]

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