 Dorothy
Allison (b.1949) was born in Greenville, South Carolina, the first
child of a fifteen-year-old unwed mother who dropped out of the
seventh grade to work as a waitress. Allison was raised in extreme
poverty by her mother's family; she remembers "hiding out under the
porch" so she could listen to her grandmother and aunt tell randy
stories. Her childhood was scarred from the time she was five to
eleven years old, when she was often beaten and raped by her abusive
stepfather. Allison writes of her lasting sense of shame and guilt.
After attending Florida Presbyterian College on a National Merit
scholarship, Allison joined a feminist collective when the radical
women's movement surfaced in the early 1970s. "Feminism saved my
life. It was a substitute religion that made sense." She did not try
to see her family until 1981, when she chose to return to her roots.
She understands that her first book of poetry,
The Women Who Hate Me: Poetry 1980-1990 , "wouldn't
have happened if I hadn't started talking to my mother and my
sisters again." Her second book,
Trash: Stories, a collection of short stories originally
published by small lesbian presses and alternative magazines won two
Lambda Literary Awards. Four years later Allison received mainstream
recognition with her autobiographical novel
Bastard Out of Carolina , (1992) a finalist for the 1992
National Book Award. Allison's fifth book,
Cavedweller, was published in 1998.
Source:
Dorothy Allison Biography, Bedford / St. Martins Publisher
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