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Bastard Out of Carolina
Greenville County, South Carolina, is a wild, lush place that is home to the Boatwright family—a tight-knit clan of rough-hewn, hard-drinking men who shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who get married young and age too quickly. At the heart of this story is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a bastard child who observes the world around her with a mercilessly keen perspective. When her stepfather Daddy Glen, "cold as death, mean as a snake," becomes increasingly more vicious toward her, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that tests the loyalty of her mother, Anney—and leads to a final, harrowing encounter from which there can be no turning back.
320 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1992
About the author
Dorothy Allison
77 books1,513 followersDorothy Allison is an American writer, speaker, and member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Themes in Allison's work include class struggle, child and sexual abuse, women, lesbianism, feminism, and family.
Allison's first novel, the semi-autobiographical Bastard Out of Carolina, was published in 1992 and was one of five finalists for the 1992 National Book Award.
Allison founded The Independent Spirit Award in 1998, a prize given annually to an individual whose work within the small press and independent bookstore circuit has helped sustain that enterprise.
Allison's first novel, the semi-autobiographical Bastard Out of Carolina, was published in 1992 and was one of five finalists for the 1992 National Book Award.
Allison founded The Independent Spirit Award in 1998, a prize given annually to an individual whose work within the small press and independent bookstore circuit has helped sustain that enterprise.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,485 reviews
June 30, 2022
Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.
I hated and I loved this book. Even as I felt myself burning with fury at the injustice, even as I felt so empty and sad for Bone, I couldn't look away. I love stories about scrappy "ugly" girls who aren't afraid to bite back at life when it bites them in the ass.
This book really is vicious and horrible, and contains graphic scenes of abuse, rape, and racial slurs. But at the same time it is a good ol' bildungsroman, a coming-of-age tale about Ruth Anne Boatwright "Bone", who shines from the page with passion and anger that made me feel like I was burning too, being consumed by this awful book.
It's a very compelling story about poverty, family, and a young girl's journey from childhood to adolescence. Bone is one tough cookie, often a silent observer of those around her, watching family dynamics play out and noting the imbalanced relationships between the haggard women of her family and the men they love.
Men could do anything, and everything they did, no matter how violent or mistaken, was viewed with humor and understanding.
Each of her aunts and uncles adds something special to this story, each a unique and important character. I myself grew up with an assortment of quirky aunts and uncles who played major roles in my early life and hold a special place in my heart, so perhaps that is why this resonated with me so keenly.
Many parts of the book hit hard, not least the ending. I loved Bone for being so spirited and fierce, yet felt sad that someone so young was forced into a position where she had to be.
June 26, 2019
”He pinned me between his hip and the sink, lifting me slightly and bending me over. I reached out and caught hold of the porcelain, trying not to grab at him, not to touch him. No. No. No. He was raging, spitting, the blows hitting the wall as often as they hit me. Beyond the door, Mama was screaming. Daddy Glen was grunting. I hate him. I hated him. The belt went up and came down. Fire along my thighs. Pain. I would not scream. I would not, would not, would not scream.”
Bone played by Jena Malone in the movie adaptation.
There was confusion when Ruth Anne “Bone” Boatwright was born. Her Mama, a fifteen year old girl without a husband, was recovering from a car wreck and from giving birth when the people with the paperwork came around. Bone’s Aunts tried to answer the questions, but because they could not remember exactly the name of the fellow who was the sperm donor the paperwork went through as UNKNOWN FATHER and Bone’s birth certificate is stamped in big red letters at the bottom. ILLEGITIMATE. Her mother tries for years to get that red stain removed from the birth certificate, but the people at the courthouse take too much malicious, petty joy out of continuing to issue each new birth certificate with the same damning stamp.
The Boatwright clan is a force of nature. The men are hard working, hard hitting, binge drinking, thieving, skirt chasing,and fast driving dervishes of fire and passion who when not fighting each other are fighting the world.They are intensely loyal, to a fault, to their friends and family. The Boatwright women name their daughters after their sisters. They name their sons after their brothers. They demand respect and get it. When Aunt Alma gets into a conflict with her husband she makes if very clear how she sees things. ”Oh, but that’s why I got to cut his throat,” she said plainly. “If I didn’t love the son of a bitch, I’d let him live forever.”Family get togethers are intensely emotional and always on the verge of song or violence. Uncle Earle is Bone’s favorite uncle. He is popular with the whole family brimming with charisma. He is the one guy everybody wants to see when they are troubled.
Uncle Earle played by Michael Rooker in the movie adaptation.
Now Bone’s Mama is married to one young man just long enough to get pregnant with Bone’s sister Reese. He died under unusual circumstances clearing the way for Glen Waddell. Glen comes from a good family, a family that owns their houses and goes into professions like lawyering and doctoring. Now Bone’s mother Anney is a beauty, fine boned and graceful, but compared to the type of women that a Waddell is expected to marry she is trash. Glen has never lived up to his father’s expectations and marrying Anney just confirms for their family that he is never going to amount to anything. He gets in fights. He intensely loves Anney; and yet ,can’t hardly stand to be in the same room with Ruth Anne without finding some “bone of contention”.
Daddy Glen, as he insists on being called, swears he loves Bone, but when he is not beating her he is pulling her against him; rubbing her up and down his body; his hands inside her clothes. His mind is twisted with hate and unnatural desire a lethal combination that kills love.
Even though she can’t carry a tune, Bone wants to be a gospel singer. She loves the music, but what she really loves about religion is Revelations. It stokes the rage in her heart and gives her hope that everyone will get what’s coming to them.
”I sang along with the music and prayed for all I was worth. Jesus’ blood and country music, there had to be something else, something more to hope for. I bit my lip and went back to reading the Book of Revelation, taking comfort in the hope of the apocalypse, God’s retribution on the wicked. I liked Revelations, loved the Whore of Babylon and the promised rivers of blood and fire. It struck me like gospel music, it promised vindication.”
Bone loves her Mama so completely that she made me want to love her too. I just couldn’t forgive her. Sometimes when we are faced with something so horrible our brain chooses not to process that information. Anney knew, but didn’t want to know. Anney not only let Bone down, she let us all down. I know we can’t help who we fall in love with, but you have to love your children more. In the beginning, children are the best of us ,and how we protect them and nurture them will determine whether they continue to represent us to the world as better versions of ourselves or shattered adaptations of the worst of us.
Dorothy Allison
The plot is predictable, no deviations from a script that has been played before. Despite that I bumped it to four stars for the lovely descriptions of the Boatwright family. I felt that Allison has that Southern gift for language that soars especially well when she is describing people. The Boatwright’s are a family I’d be proud to be a part of and a family I’d work like crazy to get far, far away from.
Bone played by Jena Malone in the movie adaptation.
There was confusion when Ruth Anne “Bone” Boatwright was born. Her Mama, a fifteen year old girl without a husband, was recovering from a car wreck and from giving birth when the people with the paperwork came around. Bone’s Aunts tried to answer the questions, but because they could not remember exactly the name of the fellow who was the sperm donor the paperwork went through as UNKNOWN FATHER and Bone’s birth certificate is stamped in big red letters at the bottom. ILLEGITIMATE. Her mother tries for years to get that red stain removed from the birth certificate, but the people at the courthouse take too much malicious, petty joy out of continuing to issue each new birth certificate with the same damning stamp.
The Boatwright clan is a force of nature. The men are hard working, hard hitting, binge drinking, thieving, skirt chasing,and fast driving dervishes of fire and passion who when not fighting each other are fighting the world.They are intensely loyal, to a fault, to their friends and family. The Boatwright women name their daughters after their sisters. They name their sons after their brothers. They demand respect and get it. When Aunt Alma gets into a conflict with her husband she makes if very clear how she sees things. ”Oh, but that’s why I got to cut his throat,” she said plainly. “If I didn’t love the son of a bitch, I’d let him live forever.”Family get togethers are intensely emotional and always on the verge of song or violence. Uncle Earle is Bone’s favorite uncle. He is popular with the whole family brimming with charisma. He is the one guy everybody wants to see when they are troubled.
Uncle Earle played by Michael Rooker in the movie adaptation.
”Uncle Earle was my favorite of all my uncles. He was known as Black Earle for three counties around. Mama said he was called Black Earle for that black black hair that fell over his eyes in a great soft curl, but Aunt Raylene said it was for his black black heart. He was a good-looking man, soft-spoken and hardworking. He told Mama that all the girls loved him because he looked like Elvis Presley, only skinny and with muscles. In a way he did, but his face was etched with lines and sunburned a deep red-brown. The truth was he had none of the Elvis Presley’s baby-faced innocence; he had a devilish look and a body Aunt Alma swore was made for sex. He was a big man, long and lanky, with wide hands marked with scars. ‘Earle looks like trouble coming in on greased skids.’”
Now Bone’s Mama is married to one young man just long enough to get pregnant with Bone’s sister Reese. He died under unusual circumstances clearing the way for Glen Waddell. Glen comes from a good family, a family that owns their houses and goes into professions like lawyering and doctoring. Now Bone’s mother Anney is a beauty, fine boned and graceful, but compared to the type of women that a Waddell is expected to marry she is trash. Glen has never lived up to his father’s expectations and marrying Anney just confirms for their family that he is never going to amount to anything. He gets in fights. He intensely loves Anney; and yet ,can’t hardly stand to be in the same room with Ruth Anne without finding some “bone of contention”.
”I looked at his hands. No he never meant to hurt me, not really, I told myself, but more and more those hands seemed to move before he could think. His hands were big, impersonal, and fast. I could not avoid them. Reese and I made jokes about them when he wasn’t around--gorilla hands, monkey paws, paddlefish, beaver tails. My dreams were full of long fingers, hands that reached around doorframes and crept over the edge of the mattress, fear in me like a river, like the ice-dark blue of his eyes.”
Daddy Glen, as he insists on being called, swears he loves Bone, but when he is not beating her he is pulling her against him; rubbing her up and down his body; his hands inside her clothes. His mind is twisted with hate and unnatural desire a lethal combination that kills love.
Even though she can’t carry a tune, Bone wants to be a gospel singer. She loves the music, but what she really loves about religion is Revelations. It stokes the rage in her heart and gives her hope that everyone will get what’s coming to them.
”I sang along with the music and prayed for all I was worth. Jesus’ blood and country music, there had to be something else, something more to hope for. I bit my lip and went back to reading the Book of Revelation, taking comfort in the hope of the apocalypse, God’s retribution on the wicked. I liked Revelations, loved the Whore of Babylon and the promised rivers of blood and fire. It struck me like gospel music, it promised vindication.”
Bone loves her Mama so completely that she made me want to love her too. I just couldn’t forgive her. Sometimes when we are faced with something so horrible our brain chooses not to process that information. Anney knew, but didn’t want to know. Anney not only let Bone down, she let us all down. I know we can’t help who we fall in love with, but you have to love your children more. In the beginning, children are the best of us ,and how we protect them and nurture them will determine whether they continue to represent us to the world as better versions of ourselves or shattered adaptations of the worst of us.
Dorothy Allison
The plot is predictable, no deviations from a script that has been played before. Despite that I bumped it to four stars for the lovely descriptions of the Boatwright family. I felt that Allison has that Southern gift for language that soars especially well when she is describing people. The Boatwright’s are a family I’d be proud to be a part of and a family I’d work like crazy to get far, far away from.
November 5, 2012
Bastard Out of Carolina: A Reader's Personal Reflection
“People pay for that they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And the pay for it simply: by the lives they lead. - James Baldwin” --From the epigraph to the novel.
"No one knows what goes on behind closed doors."
It is hard to swallow, hard to believe, stories such as the one told by Dorothy Allison. The world would be a much prettier and more pleasant place if we did not have to believe things of the nature related by young Ruth Anne Boatwright, known to her family as Bone.
But this I know is true. These things have always happened. They have happened from time immemorial. I do not believe that it was the idea of Lot's daughters to lie with their father in his drunkenness. Rather, when a man's wife is a pillar of salt, he has needs which must be met elsewhere.
In the basement of the Monroeville, Alabama, County Courthouse, the old Courthouse, are the records dating back to its construction. I visited there. I asked permission to examine the records. At the turn of the Twentieth Century, I found cases of incest and carnal knowledge of a child under the age of twelve in the huge red leather bound docket books, the parties long dead.
I was an Assistant District Attorney for twenty-eight years. In the mid-1980s, with the breaking news of child abuse cases occurring across the United States, I was assigned to handle those cases. Actually, I volunteered for it. I had no idea of the world I was about to enter.
The Judicial system was ill equipped to answer the problem of child abuse cases. Juries were uncomfortable with the facts that poured out like a stream of sewage. It was a world of children with knowledge for which they should have no basis. Abusers who should have been protectors. Mothers who should have been the first to protect their child from the man in their lives. But the abusers were abusers and the mothers were not supportive of their children.
I was the Courthouse Santa Claus. I had the ability to talk with children. I was willing to work with social workers who were more like police officers and police officers who could have been mistaken for social workers. It was the beginning of a multi-disciplinary approach to handling child abuse cases. We learned as we went. Child by child.
Through the years, I became known as Mr. Mike to the children whose cases I took to court. The name stuck with social workers and police officers. I developed a reputation of winning those cases.
And I was called the meanest man who ever stepped into a courtroom when I was able to carve a Daddy Glenn into little pieces on cross-examination. The television cameras were often there for the verdict. The crime beat reporter was there.
I was asked how I handled the cases without them getting to me. Naturally, I lied. My response was they did not. If I allowed the cases to get to me, I would not be an effective advocate for any child. I imagine my lies were fairly transparent, as I sometimes bared my emotions uncontrollably in summation. I could only say there are some things that should make a grown man cry.
The truth is, keeping the lid on your emotions takes a tremendous toll. These were the cases you did take home with you at night. These are the children whose faces I can still see, whose voices I can still hear to this day. And there are the eyes of the dead, the glazed eyes in little bodies on steel gurneys in emergency rooms, on whose faces I still imagine I see, sometimes surprise, sometimes resignation.
Often I wondered how those children who lived might have grown up. What they would have said. What lives they would have lead. I read Bastard Out of Carolina when it was first published in 1992. Dorothy Allison became the voice I had been looking for. It helped me understand better the Bones of this world, the Anneys, and the Daddy Glenns. In a way this book became an unholy bible for me in the preparation of cases.
Understand, I did not set out to write about myself, although it may appear otherwise. I wrote this as I did to encourage anyone who has not read this book to do so. I wrote this for anyone who has read it, as a speaker for children, that what you have read in the pages of Dorothy Allison's book is true.
I write this in appreciation for the courage required and the emotional toll taken by Dorothy Allison to tell this story.
Finally, this is for all the Ruth Ann Boatwrights in the world. There are so many of you. I know that you are not trash. I know that you are not all poor. I know some of you make yourselves unattractive in the hope you will be left alone. I know some of you will run away from home. I know that some of you will excell in school and some of you will not. But most important, whatever has happened to you, it was not your fault. And I write this in the hope that one day you will believe this even if you do not today. Know this is true. There is always someone there to listen.
And for all the Daddy Glenns out there? It's not the 1950s anymore. Somebody's gonna get you, sooner or later.
For those who are looking for a more traditional review, I heartily recommend those of Jeff Keeten at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... and Larry Bassett found at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... .
“People pay for that they do, and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And the pay for it simply: by the lives they lead. - James Baldwin” --From the epigraph to the novel.
"No one knows what goes on behind closed doors."
It is hard to swallow, hard to believe, stories such as the one told by Dorothy Allison. The world would be a much prettier and more pleasant place if we did not have to believe things of the nature related by young Ruth Anne Boatwright, known to her family as Bone.
But this I know is true. These things have always happened. They have happened from time immemorial. I do not believe that it was the idea of Lot's daughters to lie with their father in his drunkenness. Rather, when a man's wife is a pillar of salt, he has needs which must be met elsewhere.
In the basement of the Monroeville, Alabama, County Courthouse, the old Courthouse, are the records dating back to its construction. I visited there. I asked permission to examine the records. At the turn of the Twentieth Century, I found cases of incest and carnal knowledge of a child under the age of twelve in the huge red leather bound docket books, the parties long dead.
I was an Assistant District Attorney for twenty-eight years. In the mid-1980s, with the breaking news of child abuse cases occurring across the United States, I was assigned to handle those cases. Actually, I volunteered for it. I had no idea of the world I was about to enter.
The Judicial system was ill equipped to answer the problem of child abuse cases. Juries were uncomfortable with the facts that poured out like a stream of sewage. It was a world of children with knowledge for which they should have no basis. Abusers who should have been protectors. Mothers who should have been the first to protect their child from the man in their lives. But the abusers were abusers and the mothers were not supportive of their children.
I was the Courthouse Santa Claus. I had the ability to talk with children. I was willing to work with social workers who were more like police officers and police officers who could have been mistaken for social workers. It was the beginning of a multi-disciplinary approach to handling child abuse cases. We learned as we went. Child by child.
Through the years, I became known as Mr. Mike to the children whose cases I took to court. The name stuck with social workers and police officers. I developed a reputation of winning those cases.
And I was called the meanest man who ever stepped into a courtroom when I was able to carve a Daddy Glenn into little pieces on cross-examination. The television cameras were often there for the verdict. The crime beat reporter was there.
I was asked how I handled the cases without them getting to me. Naturally, I lied. My response was they did not. If I allowed the cases to get to me, I would not be an effective advocate for any child. I imagine my lies were fairly transparent, as I sometimes bared my emotions uncontrollably in summation. I could only say there are some things that should make a grown man cry.
The truth is, keeping the lid on your emotions takes a tremendous toll. These were the cases you did take home with you at night. These are the children whose faces I can still see, whose voices I can still hear to this day. And there are the eyes of the dead, the glazed eyes in little bodies on steel gurneys in emergency rooms, on whose faces I still imagine I see, sometimes surprise, sometimes resignation.
Often I wondered how those children who lived might have grown up. What they would have said. What lives they would have lead. I read Bastard Out of Carolina when it was first published in 1992. Dorothy Allison became the voice I had been looking for. It helped me understand better the Bones of this world, the Anneys, and the Daddy Glenns. In a way this book became an unholy bible for me in the preparation of cases.
Understand, I did not set out to write about myself, although it may appear otherwise. I wrote this as I did to encourage anyone who has not read this book to do so. I wrote this for anyone who has read it, as a speaker for children, that what you have read in the pages of Dorothy Allison's book is true.
I write this in appreciation for the courage required and the emotional toll taken by Dorothy Allison to tell this story.
Finally, this is for all the Ruth Ann Boatwrights in the world. There are so many of you. I know that you are not trash. I know that you are not all poor. I know some of you make yourselves unattractive in the hope you will be left alone. I know some of you will run away from home. I know that some of you will excell in school and some of you will not. But most important, whatever has happened to you, it was not your fault. And I write this in the hope that one day you will believe this even if you do not today. Know this is true. There is always someone there to listen.
And for all the Daddy Glenns out there? It's not the 1950s anymore. Somebody's gonna get you, sooner or later.
For those who are looking for a more traditional review, I heartily recommend those of Jeff Keeten at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... and Larry Bassett found at http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... .
January 18, 2015
This book is beautifully written, but I did not enjoy it. It is a grim story of poverty, child abuse and rape. The prose may be lovely but the drama is harrowing.
"Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies."
Bastard Out of Carolina is the story of Ruth Anne Boatwright, but everyone calls her Bone. She was born out of wedlock and doesn't know who her daddy is. Her mama tried several times to get the word "illegitimate" removed from Bone's birth certificate, but the courthouse clerk just smirked at her.
"Mama hated to be called trash, hated the memory of every day she'd ever spent bent over other people's peanuts and strawberry plants while they stood tall and looked at her like she was a rock on the ground. The stamp on that birth certificate burned her like the stamp she knew they'd tried to put on her. No good, lazy, shiftless. She'd work her hands to claws, her back to a shovel shape, her mouth to a bent and awkward smile — anything to deny what Greenville County wanted to name her."
Her mama eventually married a man named Glen, and that is when Bone's real troubles began. Glen couldn't keep a job or pay the bills, so the family often went hungry and had to move a lot. Glen also had a fierce temper and started molesting and beating Bone, and she didn't know what to do. Her mama seemed to know Glen disliked Bone, but she said she loved him so much that she wouldn't leave him. After several years of abuse, Bone's aunt saw the bruises on her, and she was finally taken away.
Poor Bone. She blamed herself for making Glen angry, and she hated that her mama couldn't protect her. At times she would get so mad that she wanted to fight him, and other times she just wanted to disappear. Those passages were some of the most heartbreaking in the book.
"I was no Cherokee. I was no warrior. I was nobody special. I was just a girl, scared and angry. When I saw myself in Daddy Glen's eyes, I wanted to die. No, I wanted to be already dead, cold and gone. Everything felt hopeless. He looked at me and I was ashamed of myself. It was like sliding down an endless hole, seeing myself at the bottom, dirty, ragged, poor, stupid. But at the bottom, at the darkest point, my anger would come and I would know that he had no idea who I was, that he never saw me as the girl who worked hard for Aunt Raylene, who got good grades no matter how often I changed schools, who ran errands for Mama and took good care of Reese. I was not dirty, not stupid, and if I was poor, whose fault was that?"
I had previously read Dorothy Allison's memoir Two or Three Things I Know For Sure, so I knew that this novel was semi-autobiographical. From the author's afterword:
"Writing Bastard, I had imagined that girl — or rather some girl of thirteen or so who hated herself and her life. I had imagined that, reading Bone's story, a girl like her would see what I intended — that being made the object of someone else's contempt and rage did not make you contemptible. I was arguing against the voice that had told me I was a monster — at five, nine, and fifteen. I was arguing for the innocence and worth of that child — I who had never believed in my own innocence."
"The mythology of rape and child abuse had done me so much damage. People from families like mine — southern working poor with high rates of illegitimacy and all too many relatives who have spent time in jail — we are the people who are seen as the class who does not care for their children, for whom rape and abuse and violence are the norm. That such assumptions are false, that the rich are just as likely to abuse their children as the poor, and that southerners do not have a monopoly on either violence or illegitimacy are realities that are difficult to get people to recognize. The myths are so strong they subvert sociological data and personal accounts."
Truthfully, the afterword was my favorite part of the book. Besides sharing her motivations for writing the novel, Allison also discussed how some schools around the country have censored and banned the book, and how she grieved whenever she heard such news. If you want to read Bastard Out of Carolina, try and find a copy that has the afterword (mine was the 20th anniversary edition).
That said, I don't know if I can recommend this novel because it was so grim. I am glad that some readers have found comfort in seeing issues of abuse brought to light, but it will be awhile before I can shake those awful images.
"I do not want to be the person who acts always out of fear or denial or old shame and older assumptions. I want to be my best self — the one who set out to tell a story that might make a difference in the lives of people who read it. Unafraid, stubborn, resilient, and capable of enormous compassion — someone like Bone."
"Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies."
Bastard Out of Carolina is the story of Ruth Anne Boatwright, but everyone calls her Bone. She was born out of wedlock and doesn't know who her daddy is. Her mama tried several times to get the word "illegitimate" removed from Bone's birth certificate, but the courthouse clerk just smirked at her.
"Mama hated to be called trash, hated the memory of every day she'd ever spent bent over other people's peanuts and strawberry plants while they stood tall and looked at her like she was a rock on the ground. The stamp on that birth certificate burned her like the stamp she knew they'd tried to put on her. No good, lazy, shiftless. She'd work her hands to claws, her back to a shovel shape, her mouth to a bent and awkward smile — anything to deny what Greenville County wanted to name her."
Her mama eventually married a man named Glen, and that is when Bone's real troubles began. Glen couldn't keep a job or pay the bills, so the family often went hungry and had to move a lot. Glen also had a fierce temper and started molesting and beating Bone, and she didn't know what to do. Her mama seemed to know Glen disliked Bone, but she said she loved him so much that she wouldn't leave him. After several years of abuse, Bone's aunt saw the bruises on her, and she was finally taken away.
Poor Bone. She blamed herself for making Glen angry, and she hated that her mama couldn't protect her. At times she would get so mad that she wanted to fight him, and other times she just wanted to disappear. Those passages were some of the most heartbreaking in the book.
"I was no Cherokee. I was no warrior. I was nobody special. I was just a girl, scared and angry. When I saw myself in Daddy Glen's eyes, I wanted to die. No, I wanted to be already dead, cold and gone. Everything felt hopeless. He looked at me and I was ashamed of myself. It was like sliding down an endless hole, seeing myself at the bottom, dirty, ragged, poor, stupid. But at the bottom, at the darkest point, my anger would come and I would know that he had no idea who I was, that he never saw me as the girl who worked hard for Aunt Raylene, who got good grades no matter how often I changed schools, who ran errands for Mama and took good care of Reese. I was not dirty, not stupid, and if I was poor, whose fault was that?"
I had previously read Dorothy Allison's memoir Two or Three Things I Know For Sure, so I knew that this novel was semi-autobiographical. From the author's afterword:
"Writing Bastard, I had imagined that girl — or rather some girl of thirteen or so who hated herself and her life. I had imagined that, reading Bone's story, a girl like her would see what I intended — that being made the object of someone else's contempt and rage did not make you contemptible. I was arguing against the voice that had told me I was a monster — at five, nine, and fifteen. I was arguing for the innocence and worth of that child — I who had never believed in my own innocence."
"The mythology of rape and child abuse had done me so much damage. People from families like mine — southern working poor with high rates of illegitimacy and all too many relatives who have spent time in jail — we are the people who are seen as the class who does not care for their children, for whom rape and abuse and violence are the norm. That such assumptions are false, that the rich are just as likely to abuse their children as the poor, and that southerners do not have a monopoly on either violence or illegitimacy are realities that are difficult to get people to recognize. The myths are so strong they subvert sociological data and personal accounts."
Truthfully, the afterword was my favorite part of the book. Besides sharing her motivations for writing the novel, Allison also discussed how some schools around the country have censored and banned the book, and how she grieved whenever she heard such news. If you want to read Bastard Out of Carolina, try and find a copy that has the afterword (mine was the 20th anniversary edition).
That said, I don't know if I can recommend this novel because it was so grim. I am glad that some readers have found comfort in seeing issues of abuse brought to light, but it will be awhile before I can shake those awful images.
"I do not want to be the person who acts always out of fear or denial or old shame and older assumptions. I want to be my best self — the one who set out to tell a story that might make a difference in the lives of people who read it. Unafraid, stubborn, resilient, and capable of enormous compassion — someone like Bone."
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January 24, 2022Dorothy Allison pissed a few people off when she first wrote this novel. Boy am I glad she did. Why should literature seek to please, rather than excite the reader? Why should it try to be polite in order to seek the truth? Should books not produce composed disorder, honest diatribes, and gut-wrenching truths? Insult me, make me angry, make me laugh, make me cry, leave my mouth agape from disbelief at your crude renunciations of what I thought was orthodox--all things that good books do.
In Greenville County, South Carolina, lives the Boatwright family, a family that bad things seem to happen to all the time. At the center is the child narrator, Ruth Anne, who is called Bone throughout the book. The scene opens with Bone's mama, a teenage girl, heading to the county office to try and get the word "bastard" erased from her daughter's certificate. Later, she tries to look for someone to marry in order to avoid such things in the future. With these few scenes, the mood of the book is set.
Poor, uneducated, working class folks, the Boatwrights. It is a family saga with violence, teenage pregnancy, unemployment, and instability at its core. The women must find husbands and have babies, the men are drunks who constantly switch jobs, etc.
I find that I "read" audiobooks slower. So for weeks, I listened to this in spurts, my iphone plugged to my ear at night, and I tell you, there were times when during vicious scenes, my body shook with her pain. The prose here is so vivid, the imagery so profound, that I felt as if I was right in the moment and I didn't like it. Didn't like what it must have felt to be Bone. Thought Daddy Glenn was a pig, and at the end I really disliked Bone's mama. Yet I couldn't help but like the Boatwright men--Earl especially. Loved Ruth. Didn't care for Shannon Pearl and her family but liked the way in which Allison used them to show hypocrisy in the the community and in the church. There is no way I could have known what it felt like to be the Boatwrights, but Allison gave me some inkling.
And this is why I loved the book--notwithstanding the fact that Elizabeth Evans was a wonderful reader, of course. The imagery, character development, intense dialogue, and bright scenes, made this book as real as an ordinary day for some. In the beginning, the prose is so lyrical, though not as much in the second half--which makes you feel as if Allison was reeling you in with beauty so she could introduce horror. In her afterword, Allison wrote that she chose fiction and not nonfiction because she wanted a "well-told lie" and because she didn't want her mom vilified. Though she did experience some of what Bone experienced, the author said, Bone was a completely different character from her because she wanted a character with fortitude (my word though, not hers).
Bone tells her harrowing, heart-wrenching story with a mixture of ease and spunk. I really liked her as a character: her moments of vulnerability and introspection, her spunk, her fearlessness in the times of fearfulness.
In Greenville County, South Carolina, lives the Boatwright family, a family that bad things seem to happen to all the time. At the center is the child narrator, Ruth Anne, who is called Bone throughout the book. The scene opens with Bone's mama, a teenage girl, heading to the county office to try and get the word "bastard" erased from her daughter's certificate. Later, she tries to look for someone to marry in order to avoid such things in the future. With these few scenes, the mood of the book is set.
Poor, uneducated, working class folks, the Boatwrights. It is a family saga with violence, teenage pregnancy, unemployment, and instability at its core. The women must find husbands and have babies, the men are drunks who constantly switch jobs, etc.
"A man has needs," they laughed each time they got together. "So what you suppose a woman has?" "Men!" one of them would always answer in a giggling roar. Then they would all laugh til the tears started running down. I wasn't at all sure what was so funny, but I laughed anyway. I liked being one of the women with my aunts, liked feeling a part of something nasty and strong and separate from my big, rough boy cousins and the whole world of spitting, growling, over bearing males.
I find that I "read" audiobooks slower. So for weeks, I listened to this in spurts, my iphone plugged to my ear at night, and I tell you, there were times when during vicious scenes, my body shook with her pain. The prose here is so vivid, the imagery so profound, that I felt as if I was right in the moment and I didn't like it. Didn't like what it must have felt to be Bone. Thought Daddy Glenn was a pig, and at the end I really disliked Bone's mama. Yet I couldn't help but like the Boatwright men--Earl especially. Loved Ruth. Didn't care for Shannon Pearl and her family but liked the way in which Allison used them to show hypocrisy in the the community and in the church. There is no way I could have known what it felt like to be the Boatwrights, but Allison gave me some inkling.
And this is why I loved the book--notwithstanding the fact that Elizabeth Evans was a wonderful reader, of course. The imagery, character development, intense dialogue, and bright scenes, made this book as real as an ordinary day for some. In the beginning, the prose is so lyrical, though not as much in the second half--which makes you feel as if Allison was reeling you in with beauty so she could introduce horror. In her afterword, Allison wrote that she chose fiction and not nonfiction because she wanted a "well-told lie" and because she didn't want her mom vilified. Though she did experience some of what Bone experienced, the author said, Bone was a completely different character from her because she wanted a character with fortitude (my word though, not hers).
Bone tells her harrowing, heart-wrenching story with a mixture of ease and spunk. I really liked her as a character: her moments of vulnerability and introspection, her spunk, her fearlessness in the times of fearfulness.
April 16, 2024
I guess I never got the memo. I didn't realize that this was one of the most depressing tales of physical and sexual abuse. I had always looked forward to reading this novel and had the impression it was an empowering, coming-of-age story of a girl who triumphs over poverty and place.
No triumph. Just lots of stomach clenching scenes and dread in my heart and intestines. This was ever so painful for me to read, despite some moments of powerful and memorable writing.
And, who'd a thunk it? For the first time in my life, I was filled with gratitude by the revelation that my mother's boyfriends during my adolescence were mere narcissists and fools. Not an abuser among them. Thank you, thank you, Sweet Jesus.
My heart breaks for every child who's ever landed a bastard for a father or a step-father. What a nightmare. I'm really just too sensitive for these types of stories.
No triumph. Just lots of stomach clenching scenes and dread in my heart and intestines. This was ever so painful for me to read, despite some moments of powerful and memorable writing.
And, who'd a thunk it? For the first time in my life, I was filled with gratitude by the revelation that my mother's boyfriends during my adolescence were mere narcissists and fools. Not an abuser among them. Thank you, thank you, Sweet Jesus.
My heart breaks for every child who's ever landed a bastard for a father or a step-father. What a nightmare. I'm really just too sensitive for these types of stories.
July 2, 2023
Possible triggers when reading Bastard out of Carolina include but are not limited to: poverty, alcohol, mental abuse, physical abuse, racism, rape, swearing, sexuality, depression, violence, and the south.
Born a bastard, raised in poverty and abuse, our young heroine, Bone, didn't have much of a chance. The Boatwrites are a rough crowd, to say the least, but between the drinking, fighting, womanizing, and general craziness they are a tight-knit family that love each other.
To say this is simply a coming of age novel about a poor southern girl would be a far cry from how deep it really is. This profound work of fiction touches on so many issues.
It's horrible and soul crushing while being absolutely amazing and beautiful at the same time. It won't be for everyone that's for sure, but it worked for me.
Born a bastard, raised in poverty and abuse, our young heroine, Bone, didn't have much of a chance. The Boatwrites are a rough crowd, to say the least, but between the drinking, fighting, womanizing, and general craziness they are a tight-knit family that love each other.
To say this is simply a coming of age novel about a poor southern girl would be a far cry from how deep it really is. This profound work of fiction touches on so many issues.
It's horrible and soul crushing while being absolutely amazing and beautiful at the same time. It won't be for everyone that's for sure, but it worked for me.
May 28, 2018
This is such an important vital book for survivors of child sexual abuse and assault, that I was disheartened to learn from Dorothy Allison's postscript that her book has been censored in school systems from Maine to California. Bone howls with impotent rage at her stepfather, but turns most of her hatred against herself. Little children who suffer need this book to hear and understand that it's not their fault.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 10, 2016
2.5 Stars
Bastard out of Carolina is a tough and harrowing read. Written by Dororthy Allison and set in Allison's home town of Greenville, South Carolina in the 1950s. The story centres around "Bone" Boatwright a girl born fatherless to 15 years old Anney Boatwright and sexually and physically abused by her step-father Glen but part of a large extended family who know poverty and life is as hard as it gets a life where family matters but drinking and fighting is part of their existence.
I personally found this a long drawn out harrowing story of abuse and relentless violence and while the story needed to be told I found the telling was just way too drawn out and repetitive. There was so many pointless sections in the Novel that I found myself zoning out on a couple of occasions. While the story is important and a shocking and excellent insight into a child's life of abuse I couldn't find the emotion within the story and although I was shocked and I just didn't connect with this book like many readers have done and for me this could have been an excellent short story but just didn't make fulfill me as a novel and this might have been the fact that the book is quite graphic and a lots of detail. I also found the relentless cast of characters quite frustrating.
I know that is a book loved by many but just and ok read for me. I listened to this one on Audible and the narration was was adequate but I think I may have got more out of reading a hard copy of this book.
Perhaps readers who liked The Glass Castle or Angela's Ashes might be interested in this novel.
Bastard out of Carolina is a tough and harrowing read. Written by Dororthy Allison and set in Allison's home town of Greenville, South Carolina in the 1950s. The story centres around "Bone" Boatwright a girl born fatherless to 15 years old Anney Boatwright and sexually and physically abused by her step-father Glen but part of a large extended family who know poverty and life is as hard as it gets a life where family matters but drinking and fighting is part of their existence.
I personally found this a long drawn out harrowing story of abuse and relentless violence and while the story needed to be told I found the telling was just way too drawn out and repetitive. There was so many pointless sections in the Novel that I found myself zoning out on a couple of occasions. While the story is important and a shocking and excellent insight into a child's life of abuse I couldn't find the emotion within the story and although I was shocked and I just didn't connect with this book like many readers have done and for me this could have been an excellent short story but just didn't make fulfill me as a novel and this might have been the fact that the book is quite graphic and a lots of detail. I also found the relentless cast of characters quite frustrating.
I know that is a book loved by many but just and ok read for me. I listened to this one on Audible and the narration was was adequate but I think I may have got more out of reading a hard copy of this book.
Perhaps readers who liked The Glass Castle or Angela's Ashes might be interested in this novel.
August 6, 2015
This is one of those books that leaves you with so many questions, but I think the afterword really helped me understand the overall message, and it made me realize how important this book is.
This is a brutal and honest story about Ruth who grows up with her mother, her sister and her step-father in America. She is also surrounded by a ton of aunts and uncles who help her guide her through life. This book is not for the faint-hearted, but still I think it's very important that everybody read it. It's one of the most honest books I've ever read, and while especially one aspect of it seemed unrealistic to me, I couldn't help but embrace the book and cry over Ruth's fate.
I cannot recommend this novel enough; however, I don't recommend it if you're still young since it is quite brutal. After all, there is a reason why this book was banned (even though I'm personally very much against that ban!). I know for sure that this story is going to stay with me for a long time to come, and I fear that the questions inside my head will never be answered.
This is a brutal and honest story about Ruth who grows up with her mother, her sister and her step-father in America. She is also surrounded by a ton of aunts and uncles who help her guide her through life. This book is not for the faint-hearted, but still I think it's very important that everybody read it. It's one of the most honest books I've ever read, and while especially one aspect of it seemed unrealistic to me, I couldn't help but embrace the book and cry over Ruth's fate.
I cannot recommend this novel enough; however, I don't recommend it if you're still young since it is quite brutal. After all, there is a reason why this book was banned (even though I'm personally very much against that ban!). I know for sure that this story is going to stay with me for a long time to come, and I fear that the questions inside my head will never be answered.
July 12, 2018
Find all of my reviews at: http://52bookminimum.blogspot.com/
“There’s need,” she said. “God knows there’s need.” Her voice was awesome, biblical. “God knows.”
Bastard Out of Carolina had been on my TBR for an age due its prevalence on the annual Banned Books List. I’m not quite sure why I never got around to reading it before now, but since I’ve rectified that situation I would be a strong proponent for this being taught as a companion piece to To Kill A Mockingbird in high school literature classes. After all . . . .
Much like Mockingbird this is an unforgettable coming of age story that will forever stand the test of time. It just presents a different take on things: What if you were told about the childhood experiences of one of the Ewell girl children rather than Scout Finch? Or as the book points out on a couple of different occasions – what if you read about the dirty white-trash Slatterys rather than the O’Haras in Gone with the Wind?
The Black As Mitchell’s Heart label should be taken into consideration 100% before picking this up because it is as bleak and brutal as they come and it absolutely shredded what’s left of mine. Credit to Ms. Allison's writing where it is due because some of the alluded to moments in this book are the most powerful - and the one scene that is absolutely in-your-face completely gutted me.
“There’s need,” she said. “God knows there’s need.” Her voice was awesome, biblical. “God knows.”
Bastard Out of Carolina had been on my TBR for an age due its prevalence on the annual Banned Books List. I’m not quite sure why I never got around to reading it before now, but since I’ve rectified that situation I would be a strong proponent for this being taught as a companion piece to To Kill A Mockingbird in high school literature classes. After all . . . .
Much like Mockingbird this is an unforgettable coming of age story that will forever stand the test of time. It just presents a different take on things: What if you were told about the childhood experiences of one of the Ewell girl children rather than Scout Finch? Or as the book points out on a couple of different occasions – what if you read about the dirty white-trash Slatterys rather than the O’Haras in Gone with the Wind?
The Black As Mitchell’s Heart label should be taken into consideration 100% before picking this up because it is as bleak and brutal as they come and it absolutely shredded what’s left of mine. Credit to Ms. Allison's writing where it is due because some of the alluded to moments in this book are the most powerful - and the one scene that is absolutely in-your-face completely gutted me.
July 14, 2022
4,5 ⭐️ !!!
December 5, 2019
It is December 2019 and I just finished listening to the audible version of this book that was created in 2012. The book was first published in 1982. The audible version has an epilogue written by the author in 2012 which talks about her motivation for writing this novel and her distinctions between fiction and nonfiction. This book put you in a world of white trash and violence and rape against children that you may think that you understand. Regardless of what you may think you will possibly think something different after you read this book. This book is written in the first person by a child who is not quite 13 at the conclusion of the book. Child is not really quite the right word.
This statement written by Dorothy Allison in Bastard Out of Carolina and spoken by Alma is often quoted in reviews. Words in the Boatwright family are not always logical and rarely without passion. By the time you read this book you will have had enough experience with the large dysfunctional family to know that.
A twelve year old shouldn’t have to understand that, let alone feel it herself. She would have to be an excellent example of growing up too young, a Boatwright family specialty.
Before I started reading Bastard Out of Carolina, I found the 1996 movie streaming online and watched it. (If you go to http://search.ovguide.com/?ci=424&... , you will find where you can watch the movie for free.) Immediately after I watched the movie, I was not sure I wanted to read the book! The movie had some horrific, violent scenes and I thought the book might go into these scenes in more detail. I was quivering from the movie so I took a break. I wondered how the actors in the movie, especially the young ones, managed to maintain their mental health portraying events that I had trouble even watching. As I often find for myself, the images on the screen were more intense than the words in the book. In a book I am sometimes shielded from the content by my admiration of the writing, of the choice of words. The film is more vivid and in my face, pummeling me.
I was a child protective services (CPS) worker in the mid 1970s dealing with child abuse and neglect. These societal concerns were receiving increased public attention and academic study at that time and CPS was just coming to term and being born. The Battered Child Syndrome certainly applies to Bone, the girl child we watch grow up in an abusive home in Bastard Out of Carolina.
This book is a lesson in traditional old time, country living. The story is told by the girl, Bone.
The Boatwright family is hard living, hard drinking, fighting; Bone is proud to be a part of it:
Bone suffers abuse that is graphically portrayed: emotional, physical, sexual:
This is the story of abuse everywhere. But not too many people can write about it like Dorothy Allison has. And you ask what was happening to Bone’s younger sister, Reese? Very often there is a special child who is the object of all of the abuse while others are untouched. Bone was that special child in her family. The emotional damage done to Reese is undoubtedly severe even though she was spared the physical and sexual abuse. Child abuse has a strong blame-the-victim component. Daddy Glen would beat Bone and her mother asked, “What did you do to make him do that?”
Allison explains her writing about abuse:
Reading the online essay from which those paragraphs are taken, will tell you much about Dorothy Allison and her writing. The phrase ‘semi-autobiographical’ will become clear to the reader.
It hurt to read parts of this book. Bone’s reaction to being abused is so typical and so distressing. “It was my fault, all my fault. I had ruined everything.” But there were also some good parts. It made me remember being a child and playing with a gang of kids in my neighborhood. It reminded me of the strength within a family, even within a troubled family.
The Boatwright clan of Greenville County, South Carolina has to be your stereotype of an extended family with boatloads of hate and more boatloads of love. To call them a dysfunctional family is too neat and tidy a summary. Their interactions with anyone outside the family are limited, at least according to Bastard Out of Carolina. Lots of parents and grandparents and sisters and brothers and in-laws and nieces and nephews and cousins populate this book. The outsiders are medical people we meet at the hospital when the Boatwrights hurt each other enough, a nearby family with an albino daughter who vie for an oddity award, the law for when a Boatwright gets involved in something illegal (common but still the family tries to deal with its own infractions), the people in the diner where Mama often works. There is a family album with the newspaper articles about the family – mostly things that you might not think people would be proud of. The newspaper photo of the pick-up truck that a drunk Earle drove through a barber shop window is a good example.
There are still real Boatwrights in a real Greenville County, SC. The book will tell you, of course, that this is a book for fiction and any resemblance is coincidental! I don’t know how exactly how that works when a book is acknowledged to be semi-autobiographical.
You get to know Bone and her family real well. You feel yourself right there in the midst of their craziness. As a result of my child protective service experience several years after I got out of college, I am very sensitive to what Dorothy Allison writes. She is a remarkably courageous person to expose herself as she has. Even after all these years, I came face to face with the stress that made me transfer out of that CPS job after two years.
This is a very well written book even beyond its confrontation with the horrors of child abuse. You want to be more positive but the conclusion hammers home the damage done by the events, however fictional, in the book. Finally, Bone says, “I was who I was going to be, someone like her, like Mama, a Boatwright woman.” This conclusion seems sad yet realistic. You just want to give her a hug. And that is what Raylene does.
Yikes! Five stars.
”Oh, but that’s why I got to cut his throat,” she said plainly. “If I didn’t love the son of a bitch, I’d let him live forever.”
This statement written by Dorothy Allison in Bastard Out of Carolina and spoken by Alma is often quoted in reviews. Words in the Boatwright family are not always logical and rarely without passion. By the time you read this book you will have had enough experience with the large dysfunctional family to know that.
I remembered Aunt Alma’s direct look this afternoon when she’d talked about loving Wade, about wanting to kill him. I didn’t understand that kind of love. I didn’t understand anything.
A twelve year old shouldn’t have to understand that, let alone feel it herself. She would have to be an excellent example of growing up too young, a Boatwright family specialty.
Before I started reading Bastard Out of Carolina, I found the 1996 movie streaming online and watched it. (If you go to http://search.ovguide.com/?ci=424&... , you will find where you can watch the movie for free.) Immediately after I watched the movie, I was not sure I wanted to read the book! The movie had some horrific, violent scenes and I thought the book might go into these scenes in more detail. I was quivering from the movie so I took a break. I wondered how the actors in the movie, especially the young ones, managed to maintain their mental health portraying events that I had trouble even watching. As I often find for myself, the images on the screen were more intense than the words in the book. In a book I am sometimes shielded from the content by my admiration of the writing, of the choice of words. The film is more vivid and in my face, pummeling me.
I was a child protective services (CPS) worker in the mid 1970s dealing with child abuse and neglect. These societal concerns were receiving increased public attention and academic study at that time and CPS was just coming to term and being born. The Battered Child Syndrome certainly applies to Bone, the girl child we watch grow up in an abusive home in Bastard Out of Carolina.
This book is a lesson in traditional old time, country living. The story is told by the girl, Bone.
They did what they could. The sisters sent Mama a wedding present, a love knot Marvella had made using some of her own hair, after Maybelle had cut little notches in their rabbits’ ears under a new moon, adding the blood to the knot. She set the rabbits loose, and then the two of them tore up half a dozen rows of their beans and buried honeycomb in a piece of lace tablecloth where the beans had flourished. The note with the love knot told Mama that she should keep it under the mattress of the new bed that Glen had bought, but Mama sniffed the blood and dried hair, and shook her head over the thing. She couldn’t quite bring herself to throw it away, but she put it in one of her flower pots out in the utility room where Glen wouldn’t find it stinking up their house.
The Boatwright family is hard living, hard drinking, fighting; Bone is proud to be a part of it:
We’re smart, I thought. We’re smarter than you think we are. I felt mean and powerful and proud of all of us, all the Boatwrights who had ever gone to jail, fought back when they hadn’t a chance, and still held on to their pride.
Bone suffers abuse that is graphically portrayed: emotional, physical, sexual:
“Nobody wants me to have nothing nice,” he’d complain, and then get in one of his dangerously quiet moods and refuse to talk to anyone. He brooded so much that Reese and I patrolled the yard, picking up windblown trash and do turds – anything that would make him mad. Every new house made him happy for a little while, and we tried to extend that period of relative calm as much as possible, keeping everything clean and neat.
. . .
His left hand reached for me, caught my shoulder, pulled me over his left leg. He flipped my skirt up over my head and jammed it into that hand. I heard the sound of the belt swinging up, a song in the air, a high-pitched terrible sound. It hit me and I screamed. Daddy Glen swung his belt again. I screamed at its passage through the air, screamed before it hit me,. I screamed for Mama. He was screaming with me, his great hoarse shouts as loud as my high thin squeals, and behind us outside the locked door, Reese was screaming too, and then Mama. All of us were screaming, and no one could help.
. . .
He never said, “Don’t tell your Mama.” He never had to say it. I did not know how to tell anyone what I felt, what scared me and shamed me and still made me stand, unmoving and desperate, while he rubbed against me and ground his face into my neck. I could not tell Mama. I would not have known how to explain why I stood there and let him touch me. It wasn’t sex, not like a man and a woman pushing their naked bodies into each other, but then, it was something like sex, something powerful and frightening that he wanted badly and I did not understand at all. Worse, when Daddy Glen held me that way, it was the only time his hands were gentle, and when he let me go, I would rock on uncertain feet.
. . .
Two weeks later we were back home with Daddy Glen. Nothing had changed. Everything had changed. Daddy Glen had said he was sorry, begged, wept, and swore never to hurt me again. I had stood silent, stubborn, and numb.
This is the story of abuse everywhere. But not too many people can write about it like Dorothy Allison has. And you ask what was happening to Bone’s younger sister, Reese? Very often there is a special child who is the object of all of the abuse while others are untouched. Bone was that special child in her family. The emotional damage done to Reese is undoubtedly severe even though she was spared the physical and sexual abuse. Child abuse has a strong blame-the-victim component. Daddy Glen would beat Bone and her mother asked, “What did you do to make him do that?”
Allison explains her writing about abuse:
The need to make my world believable to people who have never experienced it is part of why I write fiction. I know that some things must be felt to be understood, that despair, for example, can never be adequately analyzed; it must be lived. But if I can write a story that so draws the reader in that she imagines herself like my characters, feels their sense of fear and uncertainty, their hopes and terrors, then I have come closer to knowing myself as real, important as the very people I have always watched with awe.
. . .
By the time I taught myself the basics of storytelling on the page, I knew there was only one story that would haunt me until I understood how to tell it—the complicated, painful story of how my mama had, and had not, saved me as a girl. Writing Bastard Out of Carolina became, ultimately, the way to claim my family's pride and tragedy, and the embattled sexuality I had fashioned on a base of violence and abuse.
Source: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defco...
Reading the online essay from which those paragraphs are taken, will tell you much about Dorothy Allison and her writing. The phrase ‘semi-autobiographical’ will become clear to the reader.
It hurt to read parts of this book. Bone’s reaction to being abused is so typical and so distressing. “It was my fault, all my fault. I had ruined everything.” But there were also some good parts. It made me remember being a child and playing with a gang of kids in my neighborhood. It reminded me of the strength within a family, even within a troubled family.
The Boatwright clan of Greenville County, South Carolina has to be your stereotype of an extended family with boatloads of hate and more boatloads of love. To call them a dysfunctional family is too neat and tidy a summary. Their interactions with anyone outside the family are limited, at least according to Bastard Out of Carolina. Lots of parents and grandparents and sisters and brothers and in-laws and nieces and nephews and cousins populate this book. The outsiders are medical people we meet at the hospital when the Boatwrights hurt each other enough, a nearby family with an albino daughter who vie for an oddity award, the law for when a Boatwright gets involved in something illegal (common but still the family tries to deal with its own infractions), the people in the diner where Mama often works. There is a family album with the newspaper articles about the family – mostly things that you might not think people would be proud of. The newspaper photo of the pick-up truck that a drunk Earle drove through a barber shop window is a good example.
There are still real Boatwrights in a real Greenville County, SC. The book will tell you, of course, that this is a book for fiction and any resemblance is coincidental! I don’t know how exactly how that works when a book is acknowledged to be semi-autobiographical.
You get to know Bone and her family real well. You feel yourself right there in the midst of their craziness. As a result of my child protective service experience several years after I got out of college, I am very sensitive to what Dorothy Allison writes. She is a remarkably courageous person to expose herself as she has. Even after all these years, I came face to face with the stress that made me transfer out of that CPS job after two years.
This is a very well written book even beyond its confrontation with the horrors of child abuse. You want to be more positive but the conclusion hammers home the damage done by the events, however fictional, in the book. Finally, Bone says, “I was who I was going to be, someone like her, like Mama, a Boatwright woman.” This conclusion seems sad yet realistic. You just want to give her a hug. And that is what Raylene does.
Yikes! Five stars.
January 25, 2012
Took the shine off my teeth, this one. But also made me want to torch every bottle distributor truck in the Carolinas just in case it might slow down that piece of work Glen and his damn fool wife. Forget about burning down the Greenville courthouse. Bone had the right idea when she went up on the roof: you got to hit them the only place they can feel, in the cash pocket.
I read this slow. Slow and stubborn, which felt just right. And now I'm snake-bit: I need to hear more from Granny about what don't count except as bullshit and apple butter; I need to hear more of that gospel atheism from Earle; more from Raylene about the irrevocable choices we make when love seems like a tap running dry. That Raylene, she figured out what Bone's mama never could rise to.
Shitfire. Tell me, is there a love knot I can bury as an antidote to the horror in this book, or to call up a breeze wicking away the sweat of rage because I hope it might could cool Bone and me both? Or as a tonic for the country gospel throat, because I need to hear Bone sing again?
I don't know. All I know: I never before heard truth said so strong, so beautiful, so brutal.
I read this slow. Slow and stubborn, which felt just right. And now I'm snake-bit: I need to hear more from Granny about what don't count except as bullshit and apple butter; I need to hear more of that gospel atheism from Earle; more from Raylene about the irrevocable choices we make when love seems like a tap running dry. That Raylene, she figured out what Bone's mama never could rise to.
Shitfire. Tell me, is there a love knot I can bury as an antidote to the horror in this book, or to call up a breeze wicking away the sweat of rage because I hope it might could cool Bone and me both? Or as a tonic for the country gospel throat, because I need to hear Bone sing again?
I don't know. All I know: I never before heard truth said so strong, so beautiful, so brutal.
January 23, 2020
This is a semi-autobiographical novel that has been banned from certain schools and libraries.
And now I'm going to take a minute to tell you what that means to me.
What it means is that a group of people have determined the content of this book might prove difficult for a developing mind to encounter. There is material contained in this story that some feel would be better approached at a more mature age. No one's burning the book, and thereby eradicating the possibility of its ever being read, but they are pulling it from shelves and restricting its availability. As I have no degree or expertise in the field of child development, I can make no informed assessment of this decision.
But we are, most of us, adults now and capable of making our own literary choices. And it would not surprise me to discover Dorothy Allison's tale of abject poverty, senseless rage and sexual abuse was not to be a candidate among them...yet here's why I think it's important. The voice of Ruth Anne "Bone" Boatwright, who tells the story beginning to end from the core of her pre-adolescent ordeal - this life she scratches out of dreams that are destined to go nowhere and the nightmare of a violence too harsh to bear - is a stunningly well-crafted slice of the kind of hell nobody wants to think about. Only someday, maybe, you're going to want to think about it. Because someday, maybe, you're going to need to understand certain realities in order to address them in some small way, or some big way, or some way that requires the sort of insight you're just not going to get from anyone you know. And here it will be, on selected shelves, available when required.
Because that's what the hard books are all about.
And now I'm going to take a minute to tell you what that means to me.
What it means is that a group of people have determined the content of this book might prove difficult for a developing mind to encounter. There is material contained in this story that some feel would be better approached at a more mature age. No one's burning the book, and thereby eradicating the possibility of its ever being read, but they are pulling it from shelves and restricting its availability. As I have no degree or expertise in the field of child development, I can make no informed assessment of this decision.
But we are, most of us, adults now and capable of making our own literary choices. And it would not surprise me to discover Dorothy Allison's tale of abject poverty, senseless rage and sexual abuse was not to be a candidate among them...yet here's why I think it's important. The voice of Ruth Anne "Bone" Boatwright, who tells the story beginning to end from the core of her pre-adolescent ordeal - this life she scratches out of dreams that are destined to go nowhere and the nightmare of a violence too harsh to bear - is a stunningly well-crafted slice of the kind of hell nobody wants to think about. Only someday, maybe, you're going to want to think about it. Because someday, maybe, you're going to need to understand certain realities in order to address them in some small way, or some big way, or some way that requires the sort of insight you're just not going to get from anyone you know. And here it will be, on selected shelves, available when required.
Because that's what the hard books are all about.
May 4, 2016
This is a brutal life we live.
For those who say they love us, how can we really know unless they share it in a loving manner. We trust these people, these adults who we admire, who we believe will keep us safe. These loving actions and words can easily turn into anger and bring out the monster within.
When all you know is ugliness, you become ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly.
The last 40-50 pages made me feel anger, disgust and an anxiety that knows no comparison.
Some have shared their opinions about this being a disgusting piece of literature and being overdone with its graphic nature. To those people I shall say: Life is disgusting, life is full of all the anger and ugliness I display above. If we only look at the positive side of life, then we miss out on what lurks below; what we learn through our experiences makes us who we are and what we will always be. We always have that choice to let go of the past, but the past is always in us, never letting go.
For those who say they love us, how can we really know unless they share it in a loving manner. We trust these people, these adults who we admire, who we believe will keep us safe. These loving actions and words can easily turn into anger and bring out the monster within.
When all you know is ugliness, you become ugly. Ugly, ugly, ugly.
The last 40-50 pages made me feel anger, disgust and an anxiety that knows no comparison.
Some have shared their opinions about this being a disgusting piece of literature and being overdone with its graphic nature. To those people I shall say: Life is disgusting, life is full of all the anger and ugliness I display above. If we only look at the positive side of life, then we miss out on what lurks below; what we learn through our experiences makes us who we are and what we will always be. We always have that choice to let go of the past, but the past is always in us, never letting go.
November 2, 2019
As Allison relays in the Afterword, she was in a gymnasium in Maine, speaking to the authorities why this book should be allowed to be taught in the area high school. An elderly, unassuming man approached her after the meeting was completed (the school system upheld their decision to ban the book), he grabbed her hands and said 'you told my story.' Then turned around and left, no one observing what had transpired.
She told my story.
She told my story.
April 15, 2024
Men could do anything, and everything they did, no matter how violent or mistaken, was viewed with humor and understanding..……………..………………… What men did was just what men did. Some days I would just grind my teeth, wishing I had been born a boy. (PG 23)
Trigger Warnings::::
*Rape of a young child
*Mistreatment of a young girl for erotic pleasure
*Child Hunger
*Child self masturbation
I was mistaken by the title, like I’m sure a few other review might have been, thinking it was about a laid back mother effer of a person, most likely an adult male.
“Bastard Out of Carolina” was not what I expected. It’s a heartbreaking tale of rape and violence by a disgusting family member and a mother too weak and tired to protect her daughters. Bone can never be the woman she was meant to be as something was taken from her. It’s a sad story told as old as the Bible….
THIS IS NOT A SPOILER!! The author is known for these graphic images in her stories and it is also a warning to anyone with a sensitive stomach that might not be able to read this because of its triggers. It’s a hard read and VERY DESCRIPTIVE. It made my stomach flip several times but I will say the author is very talented and writes what she knows. This is a semi autobiographical account of her experience with the other semi half being fiction.
The Boatwright family would be what is considered “white trash” “hillbillies” etc. I got to enjoy their stories and lives. They were loving and amusing and always had one another’s backs. That extra star is for the characters she created.
It got to the point where reading how generational trashy the family was it was like “Duh. Of course it’s happening to you. I saw that coming.” Horrible way to think, very stereotypical and sad. No child should ever endure shame and hunger.
(We all know rich people have their disgusting little secrets… right Hollywood, Epstein, R. Kelly, Prince Andrew etc etc etc…)
That being said, this book seems to be banned in schools across the country. I don’t believe in banning books no matter the subject matter. If you don’t like it stay away from it. And it’s also an age and maturity thing to read such a book or books where the subject matter is tough….
By the end of it you’ll feel sad, mad, and defeated… I wanted to hug Bone and slap her mother. It’s disheartening.
(Side Note:: Read in Guanajuato, MX)
Trigger Warnings::::
*Rape of a young child
*Mistreatment of a young girl for erotic pleasure
*Child Hunger
*Child self masturbation
I was mistaken by the title, like I’m sure a few other review might have been, thinking it was about a laid back mother effer of a person, most likely an adult male.
“Bastard Out of Carolina” was not what I expected. It’s a heartbreaking tale of rape and violence by a disgusting family member and a mother too weak and tired to protect her daughters. Bone can never be the woman she was meant to be as something was taken from her. It’s a sad story told as old as the Bible….
THIS IS NOT A SPOILER!! The author is known for these graphic images in her stories and it is also a warning to anyone with a sensitive stomach that might not be able to read this because of its triggers. It’s a hard read and VERY DESCRIPTIVE. It made my stomach flip several times but I will say the author is very talented and writes what she knows. This is a semi autobiographical account of her experience with the other semi half being fiction.
The Boatwright family would be what is considered “white trash” “hillbillies” etc. I got to enjoy their stories and lives. They were loving and amusing and always had one another’s backs. That extra star is for the characters she created.
It got to the point where reading how generational trashy the family was it was like “Duh. Of course it’s happening to you. I saw that coming.” Horrible way to think, very stereotypical and sad. No child should ever endure shame and hunger.
(We all know rich people have their disgusting little secrets… right Hollywood, Epstein, R. Kelly, Prince Andrew etc etc etc…)
That being said, this book seems to be banned in schools across the country. I don’t believe in banning books no matter the subject matter. If you don’t like it stay away from it. And it’s also an age and maturity thing to read such a book or books where the subject matter is tough….
By the end of it you’ll feel sad, mad, and defeated… I wanted to hug Bone and slap her mother. It’s disheartening.
(Side Note:: Read in Guanajuato, MX)
June 17, 2007
Bastard Out of Carolina is one of those books about which all of the hooplah surrounding it really baffles me. Allison basically plagiarizes herself by, instead of expanding what was a quite good short story she wrote and published in High Risk: An Anthology of Forbidden Writings, simply cutting and pasting sections of it throughout the book (I actually went through it and identified the sections because I could scarcely believe a serious author would do something so incredibly lazy). The final product was somehow a finalist for the National Book Award, and I think that had much more to do with the content than with the artistic merit. The book was published during a time when “empowerment novels,” written in a style similar to confessional memoirs, dealing with the taboo subjects of gay identify and childhood sexual abuse were enjoying a minor vogue, and I am convinced that a book written at the same level of artistry, but about different topics would have garnered little respect or notice. It is unfortunate, as the novel starts extremely strongly, with the story of Bone’s mother, Bone’s birth, and her early life tight, elicitous, and strong, but then, as Allison just starts plunking in sections of her previously published short story, writing around stock, clichéd characters (the strong, independent—gasp!—lesbian aunt figure) which you can see coming from a mile away, and relying on moralized speechifying about tolerance, accepting oneself, etc, it simply unravels, and the reader finds that it has no center. The bummer here is that if Allison had proceeded with patience and discipline, with this as a decent first or second draft, this could have been a soulful and affecting novel more powerful than the resulting convincing but two-dimensional screed.
July 4, 2022
Reading this novel and Seanan McGuire's yesterday's twitter thread was a lot. Humans are terrible. I'd read this novel before, and details of it never left me and never will.
November 24, 2015
Reminiscent of This Boy’s Life and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the novel is a coming of age story set in the rural south. The novel opens with the birth of main character and narrator of the story, Ruth Anne (nicknamed Bone), the illegitimate daughter of a 15-year-old member of the dirt poor Boatwright clan. The book, a semi-autobiography, chronicles Bone’s youth growing up as “poor, white trash” and the abuse she suffers at the hands of her emotionally disturbed stepfather.
The abuse scenes are wrenching and disturbing and while they play an important part in both the plot and the development of Bone’s character, the conflict with her stepfather is often kept in the background throughout much of the novel. The novel is almost a picaresque story and spends a great deal of time giving a detailed look into what growing up poor in the rural south was like and the shame Bone feels of being looked down upon for being “trash”:
“How am I supposed to know anything at all? I’m just another ignorant Boatwright, you know. Another piece of trash barely knows enough to wipe her ass or spit away from the wind. Just like you and Mama and Alma and everybody”
Allison does a good job with this aspect of the story and it’s small wonder since this was the life that she actually lived. She was born into a poor, white trash family and was the illegitimate daughter of a 15-year-old waitress. You feel the raw truth in what Bone says in the novel knowing it’s also the voice of the author who lived it all herself. Bone and her family were often unable to pay their bills and moved from one ramshackle house to another after being evicted for not paying rent. This passage succinctly sums up the effect of such an unstable, rootless life on Bone:
“Moving had no season, was all seasons, crossed time like a train with no schedule. We moved so often our mail never caught up with us, moved sometimes before we'd even gotten properly unpacked or I'd learned the names of all the teachers at my new school. Moving gave me a sense of time passing and everything sliding, as if nothing could be held on to anyway. It made me feel ghostly, unreal and unimportant, like a box that goes missing and then turns up but then you realize you never needed anything in it anyway.”
Allison does a particularly good job with the dialect and idiom of her rural characters. Her dialogue rings true and the large extended family in her book are all well characterized and feel like real people. I’m particularly impressed with the character of the stepfather. It would be easy to portray him as a monster, but even though he does monstrous things, Allison writes him as a flawed and deeply troubled man and gives some context or reason for his actions. It isn’t a justification in any way, shape, or form, but an attempt to keep him from being just a caricature. His actions are still evil and Bone’s confusion and anguish over them are heartbreaking:
“Love would make me beautiful; a father’s love would purify my heart, turn my bitter soul sweet, and lighten my Cherokee wyes. If he loved me, if he only loved me. Why didn’t he love me? I drummed my fists on the porcelain walls of the tub, shook my head and howled underwater, came up to breathe and went under to whine again. If anyone came in, they wouldn’t have known I was crying, and I was sure even God couldn’t hear me curse”
This isn’t an easy read. It’s grim, disturbing, and often sad. Bone’s burgeoning sexuality is twisted by the abuse she suffers and Allison writes several graphic and uncomfortable scenes concerning it. However, there are some bright spots in the novel. The Boatwrights might be “poor, white trash”, but they are loving and supportive of each other. Allison does a good job of showing a large extended family and how they rely on and help each other.
The abuse scenes are wrenching and disturbing and while they play an important part in both the plot and the development of Bone’s character, the conflict with her stepfather is often kept in the background throughout much of the novel. The novel is almost a picaresque story and spends a great deal of time giving a detailed look into what growing up poor in the rural south was like and the shame Bone feels of being looked down upon for being “trash”:
“How am I supposed to know anything at all? I’m just another ignorant Boatwright, you know. Another piece of trash barely knows enough to wipe her ass or spit away from the wind. Just like you and Mama and Alma and everybody”
Allison does a good job with this aspect of the story and it’s small wonder since this was the life that she actually lived. She was born into a poor, white trash family and was the illegitimate daughter of a 15-year-old waitress. You feel the raw truth in what Bone says in the novel knowing it’s also the voice of the author who lived it all herself. Bone and her family were often unable to pay their bills and moved from one ramshackle house to another after being evicted for not paying rent. This passage succinctly sums up the effect of such an unstable, rootless life on Bone:
“Moving had no season, was all seasons, crossed time like a train with no schedule. We moved so often our mail never caught up with us, moved sometimes before we'd even gotten properly unpacked or I'd learned the names of all the teachers at my new school. Moving gave me a sense of time passing and everything sliding, as if nothing could be held on to anyway. It made me feel ghostly, unreal and unimportant, like a box that goes missing and then turns up but then you realize you never needed anything in it anyway.”
Allison does a particularly good job with the dialect and idiom of her rural characters. Her dialogue rings true and the large extended family in her book are all well characterized and feel like real people. I’m particularly impressed with the character of the stepfather. It would be easy to portray him as a monster, but even though he does monstrous things, Allison writes him as a flawed and deeply troubled man and gives some context or reason for his actions. It isn’t a justification in any way, shape, or form, but an attempt to keep him from being just a caricature. His actions are still evil and Bone’s confusion and anguish over them are heartbreaking:
“Love would make me beautiful; a father’s love would purify my heart, turn my bitter soul sweet, and lighten my Cherokee wyes. If he loved me, if he only loved me. Why didn’t he love me? I drummed my fists on the porcelain walls of the tub, shook my head and howled underwater, came up to breathe and went under to whine again. If anyone came in, they wouldn’t have known I was crying, and I was sure even God couldn’t hear me curse”
This isn’t an easy read. It’s grim, disturbing, and often sad. Bone’s burgeoning sexuality is twisted by the abuse she suffers and Allison writes several graphic and uncomfortable scenes concerning it. However, there are some bright spots in the novel. The Boatwrights might be “poor, white trash”, but they are loving and supportive of each other. Allison does a good job of showing a large extended family and how they rely on and help each other.
December 11, 2012
I was really looking forward to some Southern Comfort with a side serving of White Trash to Gari gargle with, after a longish bout of ‘classic’ literature. Its necessary, when one finds oneself saying ‘wherwithal’ and ‘henceforth’ in all seriousness. Over a pint.
But Dorothy Allison doesn’t deliver what she promises on the label. There is, forsooth (oops, there I go again), no White Trash qualia here at all. No madness, no real violence (save for two scenes towards the end), no drunkenness, no nothing. In fact, it doesn’t even sound ‘Southern’. I don’t know who Dorothy Allison is, but she reads like some sheltered spinster with a five point plan and flowery cursive labouring over moleskin writing paper with one hand and wrestling with the Lapsong Souchong and crumpets with the other. And unfortunately its not coming out like it did in Coleman Dowell’s ‘Too much Flesh and Jabez’. Well, of course that wasn’t a real spinster reeling off the sickmare scenarios there...
The grittiest, rawest Southern white trash ever rears its ugly head in Crews’ ‘Feast of Snakes’ and nothing else I’ve come across ever captures the brilliant clarity and insidious force with which Crews imbues the quintessence of the southern differential. Snippets rear up in short burst perhaps in Agee’s ‘Death in the family’, Ron Rash’s ‘Serena’ or Stewart O’Nan’s ‘’Prayer for the Dying’, and I wouldn’t know about Faulkner because he was impenetrable in ‘The sound and the Fury’ and so scared me off for more.
But Allison: this woman points, shoots and misses the mark every single time. She tries for White Trash, but her Boatwrights are a close knit, caring extended family, where child rearing and money is shared, brothers stand up for their sisters and beat up errant brothers in law for good measure, no one seems to be cussing and frankly the worst of the lot is narrator Bone’s eight year old sister who seems to be masturbating 24/7 (as you do, at that age, right?) for no discernible reason (she was never the focus of incest or abuse).
Daddy Glen is supposed to be ‘cold as death, mean as a snake and twice as twisty’: but rape scene apart, and I’m not excusing that, prithee (and again I go), this is a man who doesn’t drink, doesn’t beat his wife or raise his voice to her, keeps her and her two ‘bastard’ children even though she can’t have any children by him, and although bestowed with a remarkable propensity to get laid off work, seems to jump right back in the fray getting one job after another, thus perpetually employed. Does this sound like a twisty snake? What did I tell you about Allison trying to patch together a mean ole nasty but just don’t know how to do it? Does throwing in a rape scene willy nilly as an afterthought satisfy the criteria for successful character development?
And Bone’s mama? Phish. Here is a woman who tries her best to protect her children all the way throughout until the very last moment, when for no rhyme and reason, and mind you after walking in on Daddy Glen in flagrante delicto with Bone, decides to abandon her two daughters and run off with this fine specimen of a man into the sunset. And its not that final act of unbelievable gauche which rankles me, but rather the lack of any characterisation or build up whatsoever to lead to such a denouement.
A total, utter train wreck from start to finish. And I only finished because I couldn’t be bothered to rouse myself from my reclining position on the couch with the duvet thrown over and the Southern Comfort easy in.
But Dorothy Allison doesn’t deliver what she promises on the label. There is, forsooth (oops, there I go again), no White Trash qualia here at all. No madness, no real violence (save for two scenes towards the end), no drunkenness, no nothing. In fact, it doesn’t even sound ‘Southern’. I don’t know who Dorothy Allison is, but she reads like some sheltered spinster with a five point plan and flowery cursive labouring over moleskin writing paper with one hand and wrestling with the Lapsong Souchong and crumpets with the other. And unfortunately its not coming out like it did in Coleman Dowell’s ‘Too much Flesh and Jabez’. Well, of course that wasn’t a real spinster reeling off the sickmare scenarios there...
The grittiest, rawest Southern white trash ever rears its ugly head in Crews’ ‘Feast of Snakes’ and nothing else I’ve come across ever captures the brilliant clarity and insidious force with which Crews imbues the quintessence of the southern differential. Snippets rear up in short burst perhaps in Agee’s ‘Death in the family’, Ron Rash’s ‘Serena’ or Stewart O’Nan’s ‘’Prayer for the Dying’, and I wouldn’t know about Faulkner because he was impenetrable in ‘The sound and the Fury’ and so scared me off for more.
But Allison: this woman points, shoots and misses the mark every single time. She tries for White Trash, but her Boatwrights are a close knit, caring extended family, where child rearing and money is shared, brothers stand up for their sisters and beat up errant brothers in law for good measure, no one seems to be cussing and frankly the worst of the lot is narrator Bone’s eight year old sister who seems to be masturbating 24/7 (as you do, at that age, right?) for no discernible reason (she was never the focus of incest or abuse).
Daddy Glen is supposed to be ‘cold as death, mean as a snake and twice as twisty’: but rape scene apart, and I’m not excusing that, prithee (and again I go), this is a man who doesn’t drink, doesn’t beat his wife or raise his voice to her, keeps her and her two ‘bastard’ children even though she can’t have any children by him, and although bestowed with a remarkable propensity to get laid off work, seems to jump right back in the fray getting one job after another, thus perpetually employed. Does this sound like a twisty snake? What did I tell you about Allison trying to patch together a mean ole nasty but just don’t know how to do it? Does throwing in a rape scene willy nilly as an afterthought satisfy the criteria for successful character development?
And Bone’s mama? Phish. Here is a woman who tries her best to protect her children all the way throughout until the very last moment, when for no rhyme and reason, and mind you after walking in on Daddy Glen in flagrante delicto with Bone, decides to abandon her two daughters and run off with this fine specimen of a man into the sunset. And its not that final act of unbelievable gauche which rankles me, but rather the lack of any characterisation or build up whatsoever to lead to such a denouement.
A total, utter train wreck from start to finish. And I only finished because I couldn’t be bothered to rouse myself from my reclining position on the couch with the duvet thrown over and the Southern Comfort easy in.
August 17, 2018
Make no mistake: this is a hard read. The last 30 pages were almost too hard, but who could leave then? My jaw - even my teeth - hurt for several hours afterward from clenching. If I said I'm "glad" I read this, I would be putting it in the wrong light. Gladness cannot enter into it.
The best writers write what they know. Dorothy Allison was an abused child and this debut comes from what she knew. In the Afterword in this edition, she writes that this is not an autobiographical novel. She was not Bone Boatwright.
I haven't looked at any others by this author. I don't know if I will. It was such a hard read, I'm certainly not ready for another any time soon. But that is not because this wasn't good. It was good. 5-stars good.
The best writers write what they know. Dorothy Allison was an abused child and this debut comes from what she knew. In the Afterword in this edition, she writes that this is not an autobiographical novel. She was not Bone Boatwright.
There is a difference between fiction and nonfiction deeper than technique or intention. I value both but genuinely believe that fiction can tell a larger truth. I have built my life on what I learned in books that took me inside characters whose struggles and dilemmas revealed intricate and astonishing things about human character. I have no doubt that some of those novels were based in part on the author’s experiences or real lives—but by moving the narrative over to fiction the author took on the responsibility of fully imagining a world separate from the perspective of one person’s experience.Many years ago, when I had been called for jury duty, a friend told me she could never serve on a case that involved abuse or rape. "That just doesn't happen in my world" she said. I was reminded of this when, again in the Afterword, Allison relates some of her fight in Maine against censorship of this novel.
In that gymnasium in Maine, I heard people speak about their horror, the horror that their children would be told stories they did not want them to know. I understood too much of that—the desire to inhabit a world in which terrible things do not happen, and therefore do not have to be explained. I want a world in which no child goes hungry, fearful, or ashamed.Given the subject of this novel, it seems almost trivial to mention plot, prose, and characterization, but I almost never leave those unsaid. The prose does what it is meant to do, but there are no beautiful sentences here, no stellar vocabulary. There is plot only in the sense of "this happened" and "that happened" and all of that made me somewhat angry, but mostly very very sad. What is worth noting is characterization. Allison takes even the minor characters beyond mere caricatures.
I haven't looked at any others by this author. I don't know if I will. It was such a hard read, I'm certainly not ready for another any time soon. But that is not because this wasn't good. It was good. 5-stars good.
July 21, 2019
A powerful story. This story needs to be told for every child living in a dysfunctional situation where they have no voice and live with hurt, fear, confusion, pain. These feelings ultimately turn into anger and self-loathing & shame.
Bone lives in such a situation. This is her story but it resonates for all people who have experienced being voiceless and speaks for them.
Bone lives in such a situation. This is her story but it resonates for all people who have experienced being voiceless and speaks for them.
January 21, 2015
God damn, this was rough as guts.
July 16, 2009
Shitty book. Not badly written-characters not flat or cardboard. So I really had to ask myself, "Why is this book so bad? Why did I dislike it so much?"
Answer: because it's boring. Sure, stuff happens. It's not logged down with too much detail, or badly executed, or anything like that. The story, the events, the plot itself, is one of the most boring I've ever came across.
We have this little girl. She's born into bad circumstances, and that's okay. But then bad shit happens to her. Again. Again. Lather, rinse, repeat repeat repeat. No conflict, no real struggle, just all this bad shit happening, and it damaging her.
By the time something finally happens in the end, you've given up and slunk into weary page turning, all interest having fled.
Hey, at least I got a thrill when the librarian said "bastard" when she was announcing my fines.
Answer: because it's boring. Sure, stuff happens. It's not logged down with too much detail, or badly executed, or anything like that. The story, the events, the plot itself, is one of the most boring I've ever came across.
We have this little girl. She's born into bad circumstances, and that's okay. But then bad shit happens to her. Again. Again. Lather, rinse, repeat repeat repeat. No conflict, no real struggle, just all this bad shit happening, and it damaging her.
By the time something finally happens in the end, you've given up and slunk into weary page turning, all interest having fled.
Hey, at least I got a thrill when the librarian said "bastard" when she was announcing my fines.
October 29, 2012
This is one of the most heart wrenching, shockingly sad novels about poverty, family interaction, dysfunction and abuse that I have read recently. For me Allison's treatment of class and gender and, to a lesser extent, race (always there in a southern novel) makes Bastard Out of Carolina such an important contribution to southern literature rather than just a very sad story about an incredibly feckless mother.
A quotation that captures the theme of class and race in the context of southern history that dominates the novel: Reading Gone with the Wind with photos from the film, Bone "looked up from Vivian Leigh's pink cheeks to see Mama coming in from work with her hair darkened from sweat and her uniform stained. A sharp flash went through me. Emma Slattery, I thought. That's who I'd be, that's who we were. Not Scarlett O'Hara with her baking-powder cheeks. I was part of the trash down in the mud-stained cabins, fighting with the darkies and stealing ungratefully from our betters. Stupid, coarse, born to shame and death. I shook with fear and indignation."
Bastard Out of Carolina provides a powerful examination of the lives of the members of a family, the Boatwrights, people commonly categorized and derided as white trash--impoverished violent drunks who constantly lose their jobs, their rented homes, abuse or leave their wives/girlfriends. For their part, the women get old while still in their 20's from too much poverty, too many children, and so much underpaid or unpaid work trying to take care of their men and keeping their families together. For me, the overarching theme of the novel is the gender dynamic in which the women struggle to survive while the men drink, steal, and fight. I was struck by the way both men and women of all ages seemed to accept those roles--boys stealing, girls quitting school and having babies while still practically babies themselves. Bone's overwhelming anger can be viewed not simply as her reaction to the unbearable abuse on the part of Daddy Glen and her mother's stupidity, but more broadly as her response to finding herself in so many situations that she couldn't understand--physical and sexual abuse, of course, but also, her own sexuality, her aunt's death, her other aunt's breakdown, her uncles' conflicts with the law, and still another aunt's sexual orientation. That burning anger seems to represent Bone's rebellion against her family/class tradition.
A quotation that captures the theme of class and race in the context of southern history that dominates the novel: Reading Gone with the Wind with photos from the film, Bone "looked up from Vivian Leigh's pink cheeks to see Mama coming in from work with her hair darkened from sweat and her uniform stained. A sharp flash went through me. Emma Slattery, I thought. That's who I'd be, that's who we were. Not Scarlett O'Hara with her baking-powder cheeks. I was part of the trash down in the mud-stained cabins, fighting with the darkies and stealing ungratefully from our betters. Stupid, coarse, born to shame and death. I shook with fear and indignation."
Bastard Out of Carolina provides a powerful examination of the lives of the members of a family, the Boatwrights, people commonly categorized and derided as white trash--impoverished violent drunks who constantly lose their jobs, their rented homes, abuse or leave their wives/girlfriends. For their part, the women get old while still in their 20's from too much poverty, too many children, and so much underpaid or unpaid work trying to take care of their men and keeping their families together. For me, the overarching theme of the novel is the gender dynamic in which the women struggle to survive while the men drink, steal, and fight. I was struck by the way both men and women of all ages seemed to accept those roles--boys stealing, girls quitting school and having babies while still practically babies themselves. Bone's overwhelming anger can be viewed not simply as her reaction to the unbearable abuse on the part of Daddy Glen and her mother's stupidity, but more broadly as her response to finding herself in so many situations that she couldn't understand--physical and sexual abuse, of course, but also, her own sexuality, her aunt's death, her other aunt's breakdown, her uncles' conflicts with the law, and still another aunt's sexual orientation. That burning anger seems to represent Bone's rebellion against her family/class tradition.
March 7, 2021
Tre? quattro? cinque? quattro?
Do i numeri perché ancora una volta non so come giudicare, o meglio mi dibatto nell’indecisione tra un giudizio, cosiddetto, “di pancia” oppure un’opinione più misurata.
“La bastarda della Carolina” ci racconta una storia atroce da un lato molto localizzata, dall’altra molto transnazionale.
Quando Ruth Anne nasce sua madre ha quindici anni.
Secondo il solito copione il padre si è volatilizzato al primo accenno della gravidanza ma Annie non è sola, accanto a lei c’è il clan dei Boatwright:
una miriade di zie, zii, cugini e cugine.
Gente particolare riconoscibile da uno stile di vita abbastanza “rilassato”: sbracati, violenti, chiassosi.
La cosiddetta “feccia bianca” che più è disprezzata dalla comunità più si stringe nella propria alleanza famigliare.
Uno scenario molto tipico degli stati del sud dove queste famiglie allargate che vagano su pick-up scassati, dedite all’alcool, fan delle risse e delle sbronze, abbonati alle patrie galere e molto attivi nel campo della riproduzione.
Uno stuolo di bambini, tra cui Ruth Anne.
Lei è “la bastarda della Carolina” detta anche Bone, per la sua evidente magrezza.
Una storia di fame tutti sensi:
il cibo che spesso scarseggia e l’amore che è assente o dimostrato in modo ambiguo.
Una storia di violenze anche disturbanti.
Di paura, di sofferenze e di tanta rabbia.
Questo fa del racconto della scrittrice americana Dorothy Allison, qualcosa di più di una storia solo americana.
Potrebbe essere dovunque perché non manca giorno in questo sporco mondo in cui il mondo adulto non tradisca e ferisca i bambini e le bambine.
Così gli sguardi fiduciosi si trasformano in maschere di odio: futuri adulti che cammineranno nel mondo cercando a loro volta di ferire.
Tre? quattro? cinque? quattro?
Ho le idee più chiare: quattro per aver raccontato una storia di quelle dure ma necessarie.
Per me è così..
Do i numeri perché ancora una volta non so come giudicare, o meglio mi dibatto nell’indecisione tra un giudizio, cosiddetto, “di pancia” oppure un’opinione più misurata.
“La bastarda della Carolina” ci racconta una storia atroce da un lato molto localizzata, dall’altra molto transnazionale.
Quando Ruth Anne nasce sua madre ha quindici anni.
Secondo il solito copione il padre si è volatilizzato al primo accenno della gravidanza ma Annie non è sola, accanto a lei c’è il clan dei Boatwright:
una miriade di zie, zii, cugini e cugine.
Gente particolare riconoscibile da uno stile di vita abbastanza “rilassato”: sbracati, violenti, chiassosi.
La cosiddetta “feccia bianca” che più è disprezzata dalla comunità più si stringe nella propria alleanza famigliare.
Uno scenario molto tipico degli stati del sud dove queste famiglie allargate che vagano su pick-up scassati, dedite all’alcool, fan delle risse e delle sbronze, abbonati alle patrie galere e molto attivi nel campo della riproduzione.
Uno stuolo di bambini, tra cui Ruth Anne.
Lei è “la bastarda della Carolina” detta anche Bone, per la sua evidente magrezza.
Una storia di fame tutti sensi:
il cibo che spesso scarseggia e l’amore che è assente o dimostrato in modo ambiguo.
Una storia di violenze anche disturbanti.
Di paura, di sofferenze e di tanta rabbia.
Questo fa del racconto della scrittrice americana Dorothy Allison, qualcosa di più di una storia solo americana.
Potrebbe essere dovunque perché non manca giorno in questo sporco mondo in cui il mondo adulto non tradisca e ferisca i bambini e le bambine.
Così gli sguardi fiduciosi si trasformano in maschere di odio: futuri adulti che cammineranno nel mondo cercando a loro volta di ferire.
Tre? quattro? cinque? quattro?
Ho le idee più chiare: quattro per aver raccontato una storia di quelle dure ma necessarie.
Per me è così..
November 22, 2008
i have no idea why this book gets so much love. the writing is mediocre, the story construction weak-linked, the point fudged by so much nonsense, it's blurry and romanticized and wrapped in cheap tin foil and smelling of county fair cotton candy. and the mistique of class: i like it just as much as i like the mistique of ethnicity, i.e. not at all.
November 18, 2022
I was reading Nadine Gordimer short stories and found myself feeling a bit overwhelmed, discomfited by her capacity to lead me gently astray, perhaps by an unexpectedly lovely garden, before suddenly I'm falling directly off a cliff, face first - you know - South Africa 1989?
So, I thought, take a break, grab something light! Funny! Southern humor!
Wrong grab.
This is 300 pages of abuse, dysfunction, misogyny on every level; including the most painful and brutal betrayal of all, seeing a mother choose, over all else, the man who has stolen everything from her child. How can someone unsee things that were definitely seen? Classic DARVO. Practiced self-gaslighting - an entire lifetime of practice:
“Men could do anything, and everything they did, no matter how violent or mistaken, was viewed with humor and understanding. The sheriff would lock them up for shooting out each other’s windows, or racing their pickups down the railways tracks, or punching out the bartender over at the Rhythm Ranch, and my aunts would shrug and make sure the children were all right at home. What men did was just what men did.”
I pretty much hated this book. After decades of caring for the homeless, I have heard permutations of this story many, so many times. Betrayal, neglect, self-loathing, the careful teaching of the latter from mother to daughter, for generations. How the abused learn that whatever happens to them is their fault. But the search, the need, the ache for “love” or, rather, some toxic mimic of love - lives on, emptier and needier in the next generation, and around and around we go.
I know I’ve been fortunate (God Bless the Child Who…) but darlin’ really, love NEVER hurts. If you’re hurting, it isn’t love, it’s hate.
So, I thought, take a break, grab something light! Funny! Southern humor!
Wrong grab.
This is 300 pages of abuse, dysfunction, misogyny on every level; including the most painful and brutal betrayal of all, seeing a mother choose, over all else, the man who has stolen everything from her child. How can someone unsee things that were definitely seen? Classic DARVO. Practiced self-gaslighting - an entire lifetime of practice:
“Men could do anything, and everything they did, no matter how violent or mistaken, was viewed with humor and understanding. The sheriff would lock them up for shooting out each other’s windows, or racing their pickups down the railways tracks, or punching out the bartender over at the Rhythm Ranch, and my aunts would shrug and make sure the children were all right at home. What men did was just what men did.”
I pretty much hated this book. After decades of caring for the homeless, I have heard permutations of this story many, so many times. Betrayal, neglect, self-loathing, the careful teaching of the latter from mother to daughter, for generations. How the abused learn that whatever happens to them is their fault. But the search, the need, the ache for “love” or, rather, some toxic mimic of love - lives on, emptier and needier in the next generation, and around and around we go.
I know I’ve been fortunate (God Bless the Child Who…) but darlin’ really, love NEVER hurts. If you’re hurting, it isn’t love, it’s hate.
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