title: Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart
text: # Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart
  
  Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart is a 1990 novel by American novelist Joyce Carol Oates. The title is taken from "In the Desert", a poem by Stephen Crane. Oates's novel was nominated for best work of fiction in the 1990 National Book Awards.
  
  ## Plot summary
  
  In the early 1950s in Hammond, New York, a young white girl named Iris Courtney and her black friend Jinx Fairchild are united by a murder that they commit in self-defense. From this central moment, this novel weaves out the stories of two families that intercross across divisions of race and class.
  
  ## Critical reaction
  
  Entertainment Weekly gave it an A, calling Oates "a storyteller with few peers".
  
  