Dorothy Allison

Dorothy Allison (born April 11, 1949) is an American writer from South Carolina whose writing focuses on class struggle, sexual abuse, child abuse, feminism and lesbianism. She is a self-identified lesbian femme.[1] Allison has won a number of awards for her writing, including several Lambda Literary Awards. In 2014, Allison was elected to membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers.[2]

For the Australian actress, see Dorothy Alison. For the detective, see Dorothy Allison (psychic). For the Scottish singer, see Dot Allison.

Dorothy Allison
Allison at the 2011 Miami Book Fair
Born	(1949-04-11) April 11, 1949 Greenville, South Carolina, US
Occupation	writer, poet, novelist
Nationality	American
Subject	class struggle, child and sexual abuse, women, lesbianism, feminism, and family
Literary movement	Feminism
Spouse	Alix Layman
Children	1
Website
www.dorothyallison.com

Biography

Early life

Dorothy E. Allison was born on April 11, 1949 in Greenville, South Carolina to Ruth Gibson Allison, who was fifteen at the time. Her single mother was poor, working as a waitress and cook. Ruth eventually married, but when Dorothy was five, her stepfather began to abuse her sexually. This abuse lasted for seven years. At age 11 Allison told a relative about it, who told her mother. Ruth forced her husband to leave the girl alone, and the family remained together. The respite did not last long, as the stepfather resumed the sexual abuse, continuing for five years. Allison suffered mentally and physically, contracting gonorrhea that was not diagnosed and treated until she was in her 20s. The untreated disease left her unable to have children.[3]

College years

In the early 1970s, Allison attended Florida Presbyterian College (now Eckerd College) on a National Merit scholarship. While in college, she joined the women's movement by way of a feminist collective. She credits "militant feminists" for encouraging her decision to write. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology.[4]

Career

Allison held a wide variety of jobs before gaining any success as a writer. She worked as a salad girl, a maid, a nanny, a substitute teacher, and helped establish a feminist bookstore in Florida. She also worked at a child-care center, answered phones at a rape crisis center, and clerked with the Social Security Administration. In certain periods, she trained during the day and at night sat in her motel room and wrote on yellow legal pads. She wrote about her life experiences, including the abuse by her stepfather, dealing with poverty, and her lust for women. This became the backbone of her future works.[5]

Her first novel Bastard Out of Carolina was published in 1992. It was later adapted as a film of the same name, directed by Anjelica Huston for TNT. The book and film both generated controversy because of the graphic content, and the TV film was aired on Showtime rather than TNT. The Canadian Maritime Film Classification Board initially banned distribution of the film in Canada, but it was reversed on appeal. In November 1997, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court affirmed a State Board of Education decision to ban the book in public high schools because of its graphic content.[5]

In 2007, Allison announced that she was working on a new novel entitled She Who, to be published by Riverhead Press.[6][7]

Allison held a three-month residency at Emory University in Atlanta in 2008 as the Bill and Carol Fox Center Distinguished Visiting Professor.[5]

Allison at the 2008 Brooklyn Book Festival.

Writing

Themes in Allison's work include class struggle, child and sexual abuse, women, lesbianism, feminism, and family. French literary scholar Mélanie Grué, describes Allison's work as a celebration of "the vilified transgressive lesbian body."[8] Grué also notes Allison's ability "to make [lesbian] desire and pleasure public" in her writing, in contrast to the second-wave feminist views on "correct expressions" of sexuality. [8]

Allison's first novel, the semi-autobiographical Bastard Out of Carolina (1992), was one of five finalists for the 1992 National Book Award.[4]

Her influences include Toni Morrison, Bertha Harris, and Audre Lorde. Allison says The Bluest Eye by Morrison helped her to write about incest.[9] In the early 1980s, Allison met Lorde at a poetry reading. After reading what would eventually become her short-story "River of Names," Lorde approached her and told her that she simply must write.[5]

Sex and gender activist

Allison has advocated for safer sex and is active in feminist and lesbian communities. In 1977, she became an associate of the American nonprofit publishing organization Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP).[10] She and Jo Arnone cofounded the Lesbian Sex Mafia in 1981.[11][12]

Honors

In 2007, Allison was elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers.[13]

Bibliography

Writing

• The Women Who Hate Me: Poems by Dorothy Allison (1983)
• Trash: Short Stories (1988) ISBN 9780452283510
• The Women Who Hate Me: Poetry 1980–1990 (1991) ISBN 978-0932379986
• Bastard Out of Carolina (1992) ISBN 9780452297753
• Skin: Talking About Sex, Class & Literature (1994) ISBN 9780044409441
• Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (1995) ISBN 9780006548812
• Cavedweller (1998) ISBN 978-0452279698
• She Who (TBA)

Filmography

• Bastard Out of Carolina (1996)
• 2 or 3 Things But Nothing for Sure (1997)
• After Stonewall (1999)
• Cavedweller (2004), directed by Lisa Cholodenko with Aidan Quinn and Kyra Sedgwick

Stage

• Cavedweller (2003), adapted for stage by Kate Moira Ryan at the New York Theatre Workshop

Awards

• 2007 – Jim Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelists' Prize (Saints and Sinners Literary Festival)[14]

See also

• Fellowship of Southern Writers
• South Carolina literature

References

1. Ed. Burke, Jennifer Clare (2009). Visible: A Femmethology Vol. 2. Homofactus Press. p. 44. ISBN 978-0978597351.
2. "Dorothy Allison". The Fellowship of Southern Writers. Archived from the original on 28 August 2015. Retrieved 20 March 2014.
3. Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit, Michigan: Gale. 2004. ISBN 978-0-7876-3995-2.
4. "Depth, From The South At Hamilton College, Dorothy Allison Offers Crowd A Sip Of Reality." Laura T. Ryan Staff. The Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY). STARS; p. 21, October 22, 2000
5. Marsh, "Dorothy Allison"
6. Nolan, Margaret. "Dorothy Allison: Zen redneck dyke mama". The Watermark.
7. Hartt, Jordan (28 March 2007). "An Interview with Dorothy Allison". Centrum. Archived from the original on 20 July 2011.
8. Grué, Mélanie (2015-09-16). "Celebrating Queer Lesbian Desires with Dorothy Allison: From moral monstrosity to the beautiful materiality of the body". Ilha do Desterro. 68 (2): 127. doi:10.5007/2175-8026.2015v68n2p127. ISSN 2175-8026.
9. Dorothy, Allison (2012). Bastard out of Carolina. New York: Penguin. pp. Afterword. ISBN 0452269571. OCLC 27640153.
10. "Associates". www.wifp.org. Retrieved 2017-06-21.
11. Pat Califia (1988). The Lesbian S/M Safety Manual. Lace Publications. ISBN 978-1-55583-301-5.
12. "About Us – Lesbian Sex Mafia". Lesbiansexmafia.org. Retrieved 2020-05-03.
13. "Dorothy Allison". Fellowship of Southern Writers. Retrieved 2018-08-19.
14. "Saints and Sinners Literary Festival". bestofneworleans.com, May 8, 2007.

Further reading

• Contemporary Authors Online (Detroit, MI: Gale, 2004), ISBN 978-0-7876-3995-2
• Philip Gambone, Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans (Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 2010), ISBN 978-0-299-23684-7
• Janet Z. Marsh, "Dorothy Allison" in Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twenty-First-Century American Novelists, Second Series (Detroit, MI: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2009), ISBN 978-0-7876-8168-5
• Megan, Carolyn E.; Allison, Dorothy (1994). "Moving Toward Truth: An Interview with Dorothy Allison". The Kenyon Review. 16 (4): 71–83. JSTOR 4337130.
• Carter, Natalie. ""A Southern Expendable": Cultural Patriarchy, Maternal Abandonment, and Narrativization in Dorothy Allison's
• Carter, Natalie (2013). "Bastard Out of Carolina". Women's Studies. 42 (8): 886–903. doi:10.1080/00497878.2013.830540.
• Allison, Dorothy. Interview by Kelly Anderson. Video recording, November 18 and 19, 2007. Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, Sophia Smith Collection.https://www.smith.edu/library/libs/ssc/vof/transcripts/Allison.pdf

External links

• Official website
• Works by or about Dorothy Allison in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Bio at The Fellowship of Southern Writers
• AuthorViews video interview about Bastard Out of Carolina
• A Question of Class by Dorothy Allison
• FemBiography of Dorothy Allison
• Guide to the Dorothy Allison Papers at Duke University