Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart
E381604
Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart is a 1990 novel by Joyce Carol Oates that explores race, class, and moral guilt through the intertwined lives of a white girl and a Black boy bound together by a violent crime in 1950s upstate New York.
All labels observed (1)
| Label | Occurrences |
|---|---|
| Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart canonical | 2 |
How this entity was disambiguated
This entity first appeared as the object of triple T3724991 — resolving that mention is where its identity was fixed. The disambiguator weighed these candidate entities and picked the highlighted one (or “None”, minting a new entity). This is how homonymy is resolved: the same surface form can point to different entities.
NED1
Entity disambiguation (via context triple)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart Context triple: [Joyce Carol Oates, notableWork, Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart]
-
A.
Bitter with the Sweet
"Bitter with the Sweet" is a song featured on the 1969 folk-rock album *Rhymes & Reasons* by John Denver.
-
B.
Burning Heart
"Burning Heart" is a 1985 hard rock song by Survivor, best known for its appearance on the Rocky IV soundtrack and its themes of struggle and determination during the Cold War era.
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C.
Poison Heart
"Poison Heart" is a punk rock song by Dee Dee Ramone, best known through its recording by the Ramones and noted for its darker, more introspective lyrics.
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D.
Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow
"Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow" is a contemplative, jazz-inflected folk song by Joni Mitchell that explores themes of female autonomy, spirituality, and emotional resilience.
-
E.
Burning Hearts
Burning Hearts is an Italian crime drama film starring Riccardo Scamarcio that explores themes of love, loyalty, and organized crime in Southern Italy.
- F. None of above. chosen
- G. Unsure - the case is ambiguous/there is not enough information to decide.
NED2
Entity disambiguation (via description)
gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07
Target entity: Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart Target entity description: Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart is a 1990 novel by Joyce Carol Oates that explores race, class, and moral guilt through the intertwined lives of a white girl and a Black boy bound together by a violent crime in 1950s upstate New York.
-
A.
Bitter with the Sweet
"Bitter with the Sweet" is a song featured on the 1969 folk-rock album *Rhymes & Reasons* by John Denver.
-
B.
Burning Heart
"Burning Heart" is a 1985 hard rock song by Survivor, best known for its appearance on the Rocky IV soundtrack and its themes of struggle and determination during the Cold War era.
-
C.
Poison Heart
"Poison Heart" is a punk rock song by Dee Dee Ramone, best known through its recording by the Ramones and noted for its darker, more introspective lyrics.
-
D.
Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow
"Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow" is a contemplative, jazz-inflected folk song by Joni Mitchell that explores themes of female autonomy, spirituality, and emotional resilience.
-
E.
Burning Hearts
Burning Hearts is an Italian crime drama film starring Riccardo Scamarcio that explores themes of love, loyalty, and organized crime in Southern Italy.
- F. None of above. chosen
Statements (48)
| Predicate | Object |
|---|---|
| instanceOf | novel ⓘ |
| author | Joyce Carol Oates ⓘ |
| centralEvent | violent crime linking a white girl and a Black boy ⓘ |
| countryOfOrigin |
United States of America
ⓘ
surface form:
United States
|
| explores |
guilt and complicity
ⓘ
interracial relationships ⓘ racial tension in mid-20th-century America ⓘ social inequality ⓘ the impact of violence on adolescence ⓘ |
| featuresCharacter |
Duke Courtney
ⓘ
Iris Courtney ⓘ Jinx Fairchild ⓘ Lisette ⓘ |
| genre |
literary fiction
ⓘ
psychological novel ⓘ social novel ⓘ |
| hasForm | prose ⓘ |
| hasMotif |
alcoholism
ⓘ
basketball as a symbol of opportunity and constraint ⓘ domestic abuse ⓘ secrecy ⓘ |
| hasSubject |
race relations in the United States
ⓘ
working-class life in postwar America ⓘ |
| hasTitleOrigin | line from Stephen Crane’s poem "In the Desert" ⓘ |
| language | English ⓘ |
| literaryPeriod | late 20th-century American literature ⓘ |
| literaryStyle |
psychological depth
ⓘ
realist ⓘ |
| mainTheme |
class
ⓘ
family relationships ⓘ identity ⓘ moral guilt ⓘ race ⓘ violence ⓘ |
| medium | print ⓘ |
| narrativePerspective | third-person narration ⓘ |
| notableFor |
depiction of interracial dynamics in 1950s America
ⓘ
exploration of systemic racism ⓘ portrayal of female adolescence ⓘ |
| partOf | Joyce Carol Oates’s body of work on American violence ⓘ |
| protagonist |
Iris Courtney
ⓘ
Jinx Fairchild ⓘ |
| publicationYear | 1990 ⓘ |
| publisher | Dutton ⓘ |
| setInRegion | upstate New York ⓘ |
| setInTimePeriod | 1950s ⓘ |
| setting | small industrial city in upstate New York ⓘ |
| targetAudience | adult readers ⓘ |
How these facts were elicited
The pipeline generated the facts above by prompting gpt-5.1 with this entity's name + description and the instruction below.
Instruction
You are a knowledge base construction expert. Given a subject entity and a description of it, return factual statements that you know for the subject as a JSON list of dictionaries(triples), where keys must be "subject", "predicate" and "object". The number of facts may be very high, between 25 to 50 or more, for very popular subjects. For less popular subjects, the number of facts can be very low, like 5 or 10. # Requirements - If you don't know the subject at all, return an empty list. - If the subject is not a named entity, return an empty list. - Include at least one triple where predicate is "instanceOf". - Do not get too wordy. - Separate several objects into multiple triples with one object.
Input
Subject: Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart Description of subject: Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart is a 1990 novel by Joyce Carol Oates that explores race, class, and moral guilt through the intertwined lives of a white girl and a Black boy bound together by a violent crime in 1950s upstate New York.
Referenced by (2)
Full triples — surface form annotated when it differs from this entity's canonical label.
subject surface form:
Joyce Carol Oates