Table of Contents
A PLUME BOOK ESSENTIAL EDITIONS BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA
DOROTHY ALLISON is the author of Trash, a collection of short stories; Cavedweller, a novel; The Women Who Hate Me, Poetry 1980-1990; Skin: Talking About Sex, Class, and Literature; and Two or Three Things I Know for Sure. She has won numerous awards for her work. Dorothy Allison lives in northern California.
Praise for Bastard Out of Carolina and Dorothy Allison
Evocative, vivid, compelling ... a startling authentic landscape of Southern white-trash poverty, violence, madness and stubborn resiliency ... With Bastard Allison joins the ranks of such enduring Southern writers as Flannery OConnor Walker Percy, Tennessee Williams, and Faulkner, creating a significant moral vision of the world.
New York Quarterly
Riveting ... Allison manages a rare feat: a child narrator who delivers her raw truth in remarkable, beautiful, original language ... One of those unusual books that show childhood abuse without sentimentality or simplicity.
Boston Phoenix
An exceptional first novel, this stunning, fluid, sad and courageous story would be outstanding even if it were the authors tenth.Booklist
Allisons work conjures comparison with Alice Walker.
San Francisco Sentinel
Formidable, compelling ... [Allison] brings to these pages a brilliant clarity and an astonishing grasp of the universality of childhood experience.
Virginian-Pilot & Ledger-Star
An irresistible cast of characters ... Allison renders their very look and touch with absolute precision and discernment. San Francisco Review of Books
If you are not afraid of reading about the truth, if you want to learn how it really is to grow up with family violence and incest, yet remain marvelously whole and human, buy this book.Southern Voice
Moving ... Allison cooks up an extended family of memorable characters ... and moves beyond benign images of Southern eccentrics.Newsday
Vivid, searing, rich ... Allisons voice speaks with urgency and pungent images; she weaves a spell in a relentless, gripping story ... Bastard is a powerful work, a tale that moves along with the insidious force of a good mystery, seizing and not letting go.Bay Area Reporter
Unforgettable ... a brilliant, soul-wrenching novel that sings with the unbridled fervor of a gospel choir.
Gay & Lesbian Times
Affecting ... a writer of uncommon toughness and originality with a gift for seeing deeply into her characters and giving them an aching believability.
The State (South Carolina)
For Mama
Ruth Gibson Allison
1935-1990
People pay for what they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead.
JAMES BALDWIN
Ive been called Bone all my life, but my names Ruth Anne. I was named for and by my oldest aunt-Aunt Ruth. My mama didnt have much to say about it, since strictly speaking, she wasnt there. Mama and a carful of my aunts and uncles had been going out to the airport to meet one of the cousins who was on his way back from playing soldier. Aunt Alma, Aunt Ruth, and her husband, Travis, were squeezed into the front, and Mama was stretched out in back, sound asleep. Mama hadnt adjusted to pregnant life very happily, and by the time she was eight months gone, she had a lot of trouble sleeping. She said that when she lay on her back it felt like I was crushing her, when she lay on her side it felt like I was climbing up her backbone, and there was no rest on her stomach at all. Her only comfort was the backseat of Uncle Traviss Chevy, which was jacked up so high that it easily cradled little kids or pregnant women.
Moments after lying back into that seat, Mama had fallen into her first deep sleep in eight months. She slept so hard, even the accident didnt wake her up.
My aunt Alma insists to this day that what happened was in no way Uncle Traviss fault, but I know that the first time I ever saw Uncle Travis sober was when I was seventeen and they had just removed half his stomach along with his liver. I cannot imagine that he hadnt been drinking. Theres no question in my mind but that they had all been drinking, except Mama, who never could drink, and certainly not when she was pregnant.
No, Mama was just asleep and everyone else was drunk. And what they did was plow headlong into a slow-moving car. The front of Uncle Traviss Chevy accordioned; the back flew up; the aunts and Uncle Travis were squeezed so tight they just bounced a little; and Mama, still asleep with her hands curled under her chin, flew right over their heads, through the windshield, and over the car they hit. Going through the glass, she cut the top of her head, and when she hit the ground she bruised her backside, but other than that she wasnt hurt at all. Of course, she didnt wake up for three days, not till after Granny and Aunt Ruth had signed all the papers and picked out my name.
I am Ruth for my aunt Ruth, and Anne for my mama. I got the nickname Bone shortly after Mama brought me home from the hospital and Uncle Earle announced that I was no bigger than a knucklebone and Aunt Ruths youngest girl, Deedee, pulled the blanket back to see the bone. Its lucky Im not Mattie Raylene like Granny wanted. But Mama had always promised to name her first daughter after her oldest sister, and Aunt Ruth thought Mamas child should just naturally carry Mamas name since they had come so close to losing her.
Other than the name, they got just about everything else wrong. Neither Aunt Ruth nor Granny could write very clearly, and they hadnt bothered to discuss how Anne would be spelled, so it wound up spelled three different ways on the formAnn, Anne, and Anna. As for the name of the father, Granny refused to speak it after she had run him out of town for messing with her daughter, and Aunt Ruth had never been sure of his last name anyway. They tried to get away with just scribbling something down, but if the hospital didnt mind how a babys middle name was spelled, they were definite about having a fathers last name. So Granny gave one and Ruth gave another, the clerk got mad, and there I wascertified a bastard by the state of South Carolina.
Mama always said it would never have happened if shed been awake. After all, she told my aunt Alma, they dont ask for a marriage license before they put you up on the table. She was convinced that she could have bluffed her way through it, said she was married firmly enough that no one would have questioned her.
Its only when you bring it to their attention that they write it down.
Granny said it didnt matter anyhow. Who cared what was written down? Did people read courthouse records? Did they ask to see your birth certificate before they sat themselves on your porch? Everybody who mattered knew, and she didnt give a rats ass about anybody else. She teased Mama about the damn silly paper with the red stamp on the bottom.
What was it? You intended to frame that thing? You wanted something on your wall to prove you done it right? Granny could be mean where her pride was involved. The child is proof enough. Ant no stamp on her nobody can see.
