SOURCE: “‘Writing It Down So That It Would Be Real’: Narrative Strategies in Dorothy Allison's Bastard,” in College Literature, Vol. 25, No. 2, Spring, 1998, pp. 94–107.

In the following essay, Irving analyzes Bastard Out of Carolina in relation to the conventional realist style versus the genre of “accepted” lesbian literature.

Lesbian representation is not simply a matter of making lesbianism visible. … Women of the baby-boom generation, the founders of women's music and culture, believed that they could construct a collective sense of what it meant to be a lesbian, and also develop representations of that collective identity. Today's emergent generation, much more aware of the limitations of identity politics, seemingly does not. While this indeterminacy is deeply troubling to many women … a “decentered” lesbian identity and culture may present new democratic potential.

—Arlene Stein

One or two things I know for sure, and one of them is what it means to...