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.....
This is a free excerpt of 135 words. This section contains 321 words. This
study guide contains 29,675 words (approx. 99 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Literature Guide with our Bastard Out of Carolina Access Pass.
