The Borders between Short Story and Novel: The Example of Joyce Carol Oates’s “Curly Red” and My Life as a Rat

Joyce Carol Oates first published the short story “Curly Red” in Harper’s Magazine in 2003, and soon reprinted it in the collection I Am No One You Know in 2004. The plight of the young main character, who was expelled from her family after speaking out about a crime committed by her brothers, was developed years later into a novel entitled My Life as a Rat (2019). This article examines the way Oates’s lifelong endeavor to bear witness finds a striking expression in the development of this story, which is centered around the moral dilemma between family allegiances and ethical obligations to tell the truth, with the risk, for the main character, of becoming the destructive outsider in the family structure. Through the expansion from a short story to a novel, the writer explores the dynamics between geographical and psychological borders as the girl bears the scars of the transgression and the rejection that ensued.