Bastard Out of Carolina (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Dorothy Allison
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Bildungsroman
- Time of Work: The late 1950’s to the early 1960’s
- Setting: Greenville County, South Carolina
- Principal Characters: Bone, Anney Boatwright, Glen Waddell, Reese, Shannon Pearl, Raylene Boatwright
- Genres: Long fiction, Bildungsroman, Domestic realism, Family literature
- Subjects: 1950’s, Girls, Maturation or coming of age, 1960’s, Family or family life, Mothers, Parents and children, Adolescence, Teenagers, Sex or sexuality, Abused persons, South or Southerners, Poverty or poor people, Child abuse, Rape, Violence, Illegitimacy, Stepfamily
- Locales: South (U.S.), Greenville County, SC
Form and Content
Bastard Out of Carolina is a young girl’s story of growing up poor and white in the rural South. It presents a stark contrast between her hopes and dreams, the strength of the women in her extended family, and the hopes and fears that keep them together amid hunger and poverty and the horrors of abuse by her stepfather, the violence that is always part of daily life, and a growing realization that sometimes love is not enough.
Bone’s story begins with her illegitimate birth, how she came to be a bastard in the state of South Carolina. Her...
[The entire page is 2963 words long]
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