By the age of twelve, he had long lost his innocence. Girls like her didn’t have the chance to stay innocent for long: they came from the south, poor, from broken families. And the violence, the violence. More than living, we learn to survive: “Growing old was like falling into a hole,” he writes. Growing up among birds of prey can turn you into another, or it can leave a wound so deep that it builds an impenetrable wall. He did neither. He chose to survive. Talk. To write. With foul words, because it was brutality that he had experienced; but free, fierce, vigorous words, those which conceal a kind of hope. Redemptive words.
Her name was Dorothy Allison and she was born on April 11, 1949, in Greenville, in poor South Carolina. He died last Wednesday at the age of 75. Her mother had her when she was 15; a young, single woman trying to make money on her meager salary as a waitress and cook. In the family, women were the majority, women who did not fit the stereotype of the maternal lady or the cruel stepmother. They were good and fierce at the same time; their only option to move forward in a hostile environment. Her stepfather began abusing her when she was five years old. At twelve years old, he dared to tell a relative, who passed it on to his mother. She supported her and left her husband, but he promised her he would change and they were all together again.
And the man has changed, yes: he has changed sexual violence into physical violence. From raping her to beating her. Five more years of violence. He had also infected her with a disease that left her sterile; It seemed to her that she had thus avoided a teenage pregnancy. With such experiences, the trauma could have discouraged her forever; But, like many creators, he found in letters and art a way to channel rage. It all started at school, where he found the comfort he lacked at home. In a country as unequal as the United States, she is an example of the effectiveness of public policies: she was able to study at university thanks to a scholarship.
She has a degree in anthropology and completed higher studies in the same field, while working, among other things, as a housekeeper, kitchen help, nanny and telephone assistant for rape victims. Although they may seem to be a type of youth occupation that subsequently lacks importance in professional career, they allowed him to directly know other victims, other marginalized segments of the population. All this, combined with study, fueled her feminist consciousness, which bore fruit, from her university years, through active participation in the then nascent movement for gender equality.
For a few years, he distanced himself from his family (“Family is family, but even love can’t stop people from tearing each other apart”). She lived between Florida, Washington and New York, and she was not alone: she became an important figure among women who raised their voices for their rights. She has collaborated with numerous magazines and edited a feminist journal. More than just narrative, she has written essays and poems focusing on topics such as uprooting, inequalities due to gender, class and ethnicity, as well as institutional violence against women. and the LGTBI+ community. When she reached puberty, she identified as a lesbian, and from the beginning she wrote openly about her love for women. Among them, among these friends with whom she shared experiences and opinions, she was reborn.
We know all this because she told it herself in her first novel, Bastard (1992), a bestseller in his country with which he was part of the quintet of finalists for the National Book Award. This work, which he published after a book of poetry and another of stories, marked his leap towards the general public and the international market, and led to the homonymous adaptation for the small screen directed by Anjelica Huston. This autobiographically inspired story tells the first. 13 years of a girl, called Ruth in fiction, marked from birth as a “bastard” because she is the daughter of a single mother in this sordid south of the 1950s.
The novel and the TV film, released in 1996 under the title Carolina’s bastard, They caused a sensation in the most conservative sector for unequivocally denouncing the sexual abuse of which he was a victim. The author admits to being influenced by writers such as Flannery O’Connor, another great narrator of the brutality, misery and helplessness of this land; and Toni Morrison, a great reference of otherness who had already broken the incest taboo with blue eyes (1970). Also the sociopolitical commitment of James Baldwin, whom he cites in the epigraph of Bastard: “People pay for their actions, and even more, for what they allow themselves to become. And they pay for it in a very simple way: through the lives they lead.
It is often said that literary style is an expression of itself, of the confluence between what is experienced and what is read. That of Dorothy Allison, with clear and emphatic language, has this courage in the face of life and a look as thoughtful as it is intimate, as firm as it is compassionate. Because in the pages of Bastard There is also room for faith, reconciliation, amazement, kindness and love. In the network of friends and family who support each other, a paradigm of sisterhood even if they didn’t know the word sisterhood. And in other practices that he discovers during his training, such as training, with which he regains confidence in his body, or music, with which he experiences a redemptive catharsis which reveals the sublimating power and the indomitable beauty of art (“Music was a river that tried to purify me. […] Singing helped me not cry. Singing helped me move forward. I released the evil that had possessed me through music and movement.
In 2022, thirty years after its publication, the Errata Naturae publishing house saved it with a new translation by Regina López Muñoz, who was also responsible for a small book published that same year, A couple of things I’m clear about (1995). This text comes from a theatrical monologue in which the narrator strings together the stories of the women in her family. Multiple ways of experiencing passion, disappointment, motherhood, sexuality, humiliation, violence; but also courage, generosity, friendship, affection. A sort of #MeToo before #MeToo that certain directors should bring to the Spanish scene.
Dorothy Allison wrote more poetry, novels, and essays, earning accolades for her works and for her entire career. The most important thing, however, remains Bastard. A fundamental aspect of his literature, less known here, is his attention to sexuality, to the body. She was aware of the absence of a critical and literary corpus that addressed them from a feminist approach. She helped ease it with text messages she called, unashamed, junk (obscenities). Talking about sex, masturbation, desire, telling it without shame, is a way of thinking about it, about what we like and what we don’t like, what is admissible and what is not. is not. And to remove the shame that covers him.
He was also aware of the lack of education on the subject, the fact that certain identities were made invisible, and the abuse and stigma that comes from this ignorance. It is for this reason that in 1981, she co-founded with Jo Arnone the Lesbian Sex Mafia, a support group for women of the LGTBI+ collective where information is provided on erotic BDSM practices and where female sexual desire is defended from a social and political perspective. The association, based in New York, is still active and was the first in the country to take care of this group and demand their rights, as it had already done with rape victims.
Life went on, the wounds stopped burning and he reconnected with his family. He married and lived for over thirty years with his wife, Alix Layman, who died in 2022. They had one son. As she said herself, at first it was difficult for her to deal with the fact that her partner wanted to be a mother, to get pregnant, which she could not do. Dorothy wanted to write and “make a revolution” and, like many pioneering feminists, found these activities incompatible with motherhood. But they had the child and from that moment he drank wind for him. Of course, without losing sight of the sacrifices involved in being a mother and the difficulty, coming from where she comes, of raising a boy to become an attentive, sensitive and empathetic man.
Dorothy Allison died on November 6 at her home in Guerneville, California, at the age of 75, from cancer. His loss did not cause much media attention, despite the gradual recognition he gained over the years. For the LGTBI+ collective in particular, it is an essential reference for having never hidden its identity, for its fight against grievances and for demonstrating, in short, that we can come out of the darkest hole to live in coherence with yourself, by betting for the community. and promote, through peaceful words and actions, a fairer and more inclusive society.
Speaking in the first person about abuse, female sexual desire, discrimination and the poverty of the old south, in addition to demanding education with a gender perspective, prove their audacity in a context that, even if it began to open up to sexual liberation and the emancipation of women still has a long way to go. Aware of the need to promote safer sexuality, with confidence and without fear or shame, she was pioneering, revolutionary and uncomfortable: “I didn’t care what people thought about my character. A reputation for being moody was not necessarily a disadvantage. “Sometimes it was useful.”
She came out of hell to build a life according to her principles and give the best of herself to others. From her story of survival, she leaves us with an invaluable lesson: “A woman only felt alone when she was unhappy with herself. » She overcame guilt, shame, pain and anger. Without ever lowering your voice, without ever lowering your voice; a voice annoying to some, because it expressed what they refused to look at; a clear, dirty and relentless voice that, even today, makes us stronger and freer. Thanks, bastard.
