Bastard Out of Carolina | Themes
The overarching theme of Bastard out of Carolina is the part child abuse and poverty play in forming the character of Bone. Within that theme, the helplessness of the women and children in the family and the losses of family members to death and incarceration erode the process of growing up for Bone and her sister and cousins. Writing for the New York Times Book Review, Allison says, "We are the ones they make fiction of—we gay and disenfranchised and female—and we have the right to demand our full, nasty, complicated lives." She has done that in Bastard out of...
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