Talk:The Sacrifice (Oates novel)/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: GhostRiver (talk · contribs) 21:31, 31 January 2022 (UTC)

Hello! I'll be taking a look at this article for the January 2022 GAN backlog drive. If you haven't already signed up, please feel free to join in! Although QPQ is not required, if you're feeling generous, I also have a list of GA nominations of my own right here.

Good Article review progress box Criteria: 1a. prose () 1b. MoS () 2a. ref layout () 2b. cites WP:RS () 2c. no WP:OR () 2d. no WP:CV () 3a. broadness () 3b. focus () 4. neutral () 5. stable () 6a. free or tagged images () 6b. pics relevant () Note: this represents where the article stands relative to the Good Article criteria. Criteria marked are unassessed

Background

Joyce Carol Oates

• Link Joyce Carol Oates in body
• Considered "by some" is a weasel phrase
• is about the lives of three working-class characters, and ends with the 1967 Detroit riots. Oates has previously written novels based on real-life events, notably Blonde, about Marilyn Monroe, and Black Water, a roman à clef that parallels the Chappaquiddick incident. All unreferenced

Tawana Brawley and other incidents

• Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Freddie Gray are not mentioned at all in the NYT article linked and can be considered WP:SYNTH
• The source similarly does not say that The Stars "parallels" the killing of Floyd, only that it arrived around the same time

Setting

• While the direct quote checks out, there's some more OR and synthesis, and I find it hard to believe that there are no sources to directly discuss race relations in Jersey in the late '80s

Similarities to the Tawana Brawley case

• More OR here, with Like Sybille Frye in the novel, Brawley was discovered in a degraded state with feces smeared on her body and racist slurs written on her body. Like Ednetta, Brawley's mother was seeing a man who had killed his previous wife. She went on to accuse a prosecutor of participating in the crime, and her case was taken up by Al Sharpton (on whom is Marus Mudrick based[9]) and received national attention.

References

• Per MOS:ALLCAPS, the Kirkus Reviews piece should be rendered in title case
• All online references need an access date
• I do not know what the quotes in [15] are referencing

General comments

• One fair use image and one CC, both relevant
• No stability concerns in the revision history
• Copyvio score looks okay, one direct quote

I'm stopping the review here, as the analysis comes across more as an undergraduate paper than an encyclopedia entry. Please review our policies on original research and synthesis and look at some of the passages that I have addressed. For the time being, as these issues are pervasive, I am going to fail this article. Please feel free to resubmit when my comments have been suitably addressed. — GhostRiver 17:07, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

@GhostRiver: Thank you for the review. You say the analysis comes across more as an undergraduate paper than an encyclopedia entry — could you expand on this? Are you referring to the "Themes" section? If so, I'm not sure I see what is wrong with it. I acknowledge your OR concerns elsewhere in the articles, but everything in "Themes" is cited. You also cite neutrality in your fail rationale, however I'm not sure which of your feedback pertains to neutrality. Rublov (talk) 17:40, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

I am referring to the background portion and my comments there. Mentioning, for instance, Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown would be apropos in a critical essay on Oates's novel and the correlations between real-world racialized violence and fiction, but unless Oates herself has made those connections explicit, they are trivial for mention in an encyclopedia article on her novel. As for neutrality, I already mentioned that described "by some" is a weasel phrase. — GhostRiver 17:43, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Okay, but the cited source says JCO is often described as “America’s foremost woman of letters” which seems adequate to support the claim that in the article that she is considered by some to be "America’s foremost woman of letters". Are there any other neutrality concerns? It seems a little harsh to assess it as non-neutral for a single instance of a weasel phrase that is arguably supported by the source. Rublov (talk) 17:54, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Well, looking now more closely at the WaPo interview, at no point does it say that Them is one of her best-regarded novels, or even that it won the 1970 National Book Award for Fiction. The only time that novel is referenced is when Oates herself says that she's unsure whether she'll be most remembered for Them or Blonde. Furthermore, the NYT article that suggests that the 1967 riots "accelerated the decline" of the city only say that white flight was intensified. (I'll also mention that Camden is in South Jersey and thus can't be used as an example for the perceived decline of North Jersey). Furthermore, I do not see neutrality as separate from the other concerns of synthesis, but rather, I see the two as inextricably linked. — GhostRiver 18:06, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification. I will get to work on these issues. Rublov (talk) 18:12, 11 February 2022 (UTC)