(by Robyn Russo)
Dorothy Allison
(photos by Red Diaz / Duende Publishing)
Biography and Works
“There are only supposed to be certain people who are worth the trouble and you basically have to be middle class or exceptional in some way, really beautiful or really smart or be kissed by Jesus for god's sake--the rest of us, we're background noise and our stories aren't important. And I just don't believe that. I think the working class is the story of this country. The rich and the upper class have been riding on our asses for hundreds of years, and I don't want to see us made over into a story that glorifies them. Our stories are glory enough."
~ Dorothy Allison in interview with Curve magazine~
As an Appalachian, feminist, lesbian who grew up poor, author Dorothy Allison knows all too well the struggle marginalized groups face when trying to assert their voice. Indeed, Bastard Out of Carolina is very her story. Her depiction of young Ruth Ann “Bone” likely feels so hauntingly true because Bone’s troubled childhood – and her ability to overcome this pain — is very much like Allison’s own.
Dorothy Allison was born in Greenville, South Carolina in 1949. Her mother was then a 15-year-old, unmarried girl, who dropped out of the seventh grade to work as a waitress. She spent her childhood in extreme poverty, raised mostly by her mother’s family. As a child growing up in constant contact with her extended family, Allison recalled “hiding out under the porch,” where she hoped to catch snatches of the conversation, jokes and raunchy stories her aunts and grandmother swapped. Like Bone, Allison was also a victim of child abuse and incest. Between the ages of five and eleven, she was often beaten and raped by her stepfather. (Bedford/St.Martins)
Allison left her South Carolina home to attend Florida Presbyterian College on a National Merit scholarship. While there, she joined a feminist collective, became involved in the radical women’s movment of the early 1970s. "Feminism saved my life," Allison said in an interview. "It was a substitute religion that made sense," (Bedford/St.Martins). She remained distant from her family, until 1981, when she reconciled with her mother and sisters. Soon after, in 1983, she composed her first book of poetry The Women Who Hate Me. Allison joined a feminist collective when the radical women's movement surfaced in the early 1970s. In 1988 she published Trash (1988), a collection of short stories which were originally published by small lesbian presses and alternative magazines. The work won two Lambda Literary Awards. Her novel Bastard Out of Carolina, however, was the first work for which Allison received mainstream acclaim. Her latest novel, Cave Dweller, the story of a woman who abandons her children to seek a career as a rock singer and her search for redemption and forgiveness was published in 1998. (Bedford/St.Martins)