Dec 26, 2009
Dorothy Allison was born on April 11, 1949, in Greenville, South Carolina, to a poor, unmarried fifteen-year-old girl. Her mother soon married, and when Allison was five, her stepfather began sexually abusing her. This situation lasted until Allison was eleven, at which time she finally brought herself to tell a relative. Allison's mother learned of the situation and put a stop to it, but the family still stayed together.
At the age of eighteen, Allison left home to attend college in Florida. At school she learned about and came to embrace feminism, finding that it gave her a completely different vision of the world. She lived in a lesbian-feminist commune for a period of time. She later attended graduate school in New York.
Allison began writing seriously in the early 1980s. She published poetry and short stories, many of which dealt with sexuality and sometimes shocking issues of abuse. Her 1983 poetry collection, The Women Who Hate Me, angered mainstream feminists in its praise of sexual promiscuity and sado-masochism. Despite the controversy her work generated, she established a name for herself among writers of gay fiction. Her success was solidified when her 1989 short story collection, Trash, won the Lambda literary awards for best small press book and best lesbian book.
Allison also began work on Bastard Out of Carolina, which has a strong and public autobiographical element. The novel, which was published in 1992, was an immediate success. It was a National Book Award finalist, received much positive criticism, and became a national bestseller. It was also made into a movie by Angelica Houston.
Allison followed up Bastard Out of Carolina with a collection of essays entitled Skin: Talking about Sex, Class and Literature (1994); Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (1995), a memoir of her family that included photographs; and a second novel, Cavedweller (1998). Allison currently lives with her partner and their adopted son in California.
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