Foxfire Burns and Burns...

Exploring female disenfranchisement and rigid class structure within a 1950s cultural backdrop, Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang is the saga of a girl gang from the working class factory town of Hammond, New York. With immediacy this book appealed to me as I have an odd affinity for films and stories about gangs and so-called misfits who live on the outer fringes of society. Something about the fierce loyalty and camaraderie coming out of isolation and misunderstanding hits me right in the feels. I don't know. Either that or I watch The Outsiders and The Warriors way more than I need to.

Foxfire is of a different breed than the bro-fests like The Outsiders as it allows you to ride shotgun to all the mischief and patriarchy dismantling with a band of fierce teen girls. They are unique in that they aren't an off-shoot of a local boy gang, nor are they the 'property of' a bunch of hoods. No, the Foxfire girls have formed this group on their own accord, and have done so more as a survival tactic than out of obligation. Flotsam and jetsam these girls are, misbegotten throwaway junk that is cast out into a briny ocean of problems that are largely not of their making. These girls all come from broken, dysfunctional, and financially strained households, and are looking for a way to just get the hell out of them. The only option for them, the only way they can have some sense of dignity and to fight back against their struggle, is to band together. With bruised knuckles and pride, the Foxfire girls and their aggressive social justice crusade make the Pink Ladies look like mere powder puffs on Sandra Dee's vanity table (...and yes, I’m ignoring Rizzo's cold stare right about now...).


Though this story is assembled like a memoir, and told like a frenzied and fractured fairy tale from the voice (and typewriter) of Maddy "Killer" Wirtz, Foxfire's main focus is on Margaret 'Legs' Sadovsky, the grand dame leader of the Foxfire pack. Legs is just simply bad ass. She toys often with gender roles (her act of androgyny during a job interview in one scene is a definite highlight) and adores screwing with the status quo (her befriending Black girls to the other Foxfire girls' chagrin was a powerful moment of embracing intersectionality while the odd 'friendship' with rich girl Marianne Kellogg was some crafty trolling).

Legs is just the personification of what it means to be uninhibited, courageous, and reckless, let loose into the wilds of society without any sort of guidance or awareness. She hungers for freedom, hungers for individuality, and is passionate about fighting for and including the underdog, but she never thinks of the consequences that come from such a fight, she just reacts, and it's this appetite and rashness that is her magnetism, and of it she pulls the other girls into her orbit, making it difficult for them to say 'no' to her. A well-executed and cool character Joyce Carol Oates has created out of Legs because even when I found myself disagreeing with her some of her actions, I still cheered her on knowing there was some good in her, knowing there was something so human about her.

Joyce Carol Oates --- what else can be said about one of America's most prolific writers? More so a reader of her short stories and an admirer of her work ethic I hate to admit that I’ve never sunk my teeth into one of her novels until now. Still her prose is one-of-a-kind, never dull, but passively read it you can't as you might overlook a jewel of a line. At times this book was a little difficult to get through due to the fast-pace dialogue and the switching of tenses and voices, but once you get into the flow of this book it begins to take on another type of life form. It reads like going through a shoe box of snapshots where scraps of memories are prattled off as the photos are passed around, unfolded, looked at again.

On the surface Foxfire is about fast and furious girls on the road to ruin, but Oates digs deeper than this, and really intersects her web of topics well.

Foxfire is a coming-of-age tale as it is a commentary on women’s personal freedoms under the suffocation of male-dominance. It also details how activism can turn into being a selfish, somewhat self-serving act that can wreak havoc in dangerous ways, and with even worse consequences. The Foxfire crew, while having good intention towards fighting back against their abusers still crossed lines that lead to violence and damage, making them all no better than their abusers. Criminal and activist --- sometimes these lines blur.

Another thing about activism is its limiting factors. I'm referring back to a small scene where Legs befriends some Black girls at the girl’s detention center where she is kept for a year. Legs, being the type of person she is, attempts to bring these girls into the Foxfire fold and it’s really no surprise why the other Foxfire members protest this "intrusion". This moment really highlights how hypocritical activism can be, and how racially exclusive feminism tends to be. As much as the Foxfire girls were fighting for gender equality, they were still only advocating for themselves, advocating for white women. Black women weren't 'worthy' enough to be in their group or fighting alongside them, even though they were poor and just as socially screwed as they were.

Foxfire is also a story of friendship and its phases. Throughout the book we get to know about the scheming Goldie, mysterious Lana, push-over Rita, and the minxy Violet, as well as a revolving door of new recruits every now and then, but focus is always retained on the friendship and partnership of Maddy and Legs. In the beginning these girls are thick as thieves, but once Legs becomes more and more radicalized, Maddy, feeling conflicted and nervous about Legs' use of excessive force, exits stage right.

In these moments where Maddy is wrestling with the thought of detaching herself from friends she has obviously outgrown, I was reminded of my own past friendships and how they dissolved. Drifting apart from a friend you once knew so well (or thought you knew) is tough to take, but sometimes you're only supposed to know a certain person, or persons, for that particular fraction of your life, and often, knowing that person changes your outlook on life later on down the road. Though Maddy couldn't see eye-to-eye with Legs anymore as the story progressed, she still felt in the end that Legs changed her --- and changed her maybe not for the better, but allowed her grow up some and see life with new perspective. As much as this story is steeped in hard truths and realities, the way friendship is assessed is in these pages is possibly the realest element in this book.

It needs to be said, but Oates is like the queen of rape culture writing, and it's why the men in Foxfire are all exceptionally horrid creatures that are hell bent on exuding abuse, sexual and physical, to literally every woman they meet. From the rich man on the hill to the lowly poor sucker out for a late-night screw, the men of Hammond and their carnal lust are the main enemy. While it' a lopsided representation of men and makes the book feel almost dystopian in a sense, the way these men act is pertinent to the essence of the text and of Oates driving home that in the 1950s women were expected to follow certain mannerisms, and that in the eyes of misguided men, women weren’t capable of their owning their own opinions, thoughts, and bodily agency.

While Foxfire is fiction and gang 'warfare' takes on a completely different flavor these days, I think Oates is spot-on about the formation and evolution of gangs and their internal strife, hitting every facet and then some. Poignant and electric, Foxfire is a rowdy and wild ride that will stay with me for years to come.

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from the margins

• Rating: ****
• 328 pages
• Published August 1st 1994 by Plume // First published August 13th 1993

in the key of...

Marina & The Diamonds – "Savages" - "Another day, another tale of rape, another ticking bomb to bury deep and detonate, I'm not the only one who finds it hard to understand, I'm not afraid of God, I'm afraid of Man"


The Runaways – "Neon Angels On The Road To Ruin" - "Highways hard in this modern world/ Battered boys and shattered girls/Leather bombers that rule the streets/Setting fires and living heat"


TLC – "His Story" - "Why does it have to be that we get labeled for what we do/It's hard enough for us to be ourselves without being used/Girls have an image too/But when they get mad at you/There is no telling what they'll say to hurt you"

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This review was previously published on July 11, 2015. It was edited for format, spelling, and syntax errors --- because I'm a perfectionist like that.