#bastard out of Carolina

[breathofgod]

[uwmspeccoll]

Staff Pick of the Week

My first pick as a staff member at UWM’s Special Collections is The Women Who Hate Me by Dorothy Allison (b. 1949), published by Long Haul Press in Brooklyn, 1983. This small, intimate book of poetry also features illustrations by Laurie McLaughlin.

Born in Greenville, South Carolina to a fifteen-year-old unwed mother, Allison grew up in a very poor, working-class family in the 1950s. Her burgeoning lesbian identity and strained/abusive relationship with her stepfather left her feeling ostracized and out of place. After attending Florida Presbyterian college and the New School of Social Research for anthropology, she found solace in a community of other feminists and eventually made a career for herself developing stories and poems often based on her experiences. She would receive mainstream recognition at the publishing at her 1992 novel, Bastard Out of Carolina.

What cannot be overlooked in Allison’s writing is her honesty and ability to lay everything bare; to articulate what is seen but never said, as gut-wrenching and brutal as it may be. With themes of sexual abuse, child abuse, class struggle, women, feminism, lesbianism, and family throughout, she dedicates this collection of poetry to “the women who hate me who made me angry enough to write these poems,” and “for the women who love me who read the poems and helped me pull all the pieces together.”

- Grant, Special Collections Undergraduate Intern 

[agirlnamedbone]

"Dorothy Allison: Tender to the Bone" in Guernica

[emmynominees]

glenne headly as aunt ruth in bastard out of carolina

primetime emmy award nominee for outstanding supporting actress in a limited series or movie

[lairn]

Books 21-24/24

Blood on the Tracks by Shuzo Oshimi Rating: 3.5/5 A young boy and his mother have a complicated and intense relationship which is deeply entangled with violence, love, and control. This is a mysterious, emotional, and tragic story. The first leg feels particularly tense with a heavy atmosphere. The last leg perhaps runs too long. I might need to reread this again sometime with fresh eyes to see if it deserves a higher rating. Oshimi's art is always great.

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison Rating: 5/5 Funny and warm and crushing. A story about a poor, white family from Greenville, South Carolina told from the perspective of a young girl called Bone. Life is hard and the culture leaves Bone vulnerable to horrific abuse, but the humanity and energy of the characters makes the darker elements more tolerable. It feels like an important book, and I'd recommend it to anybody with warnings for content.

The Heroes by Joe Abercrombie Rating: 3.5/5 The North and the Union are fighting it out over a single valley to see who will control it and thus dictate the terms of surrender. That's the whole book! Impressive that Abercrombie could write a novel about one battle (when I don't like war stories in the first place) and keep me engaged. The themes about the broad harms of war and its indiscriminate nature prevent any one character from getting the full development I know Abercrombie is capable of. I enjoyed Calder's sections best because Abercrombie is most fun when he's doing political intrigue.

Dungeon Meshi/Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui Rating: 4.5/5 Adventurers enter a TTRPG-like dungeon, at first for treasure, and then to save the life of a party member. It's also about food. And also about processing fear and grief about death. But also about finding satisfaction in day-to-day life. But also, also about a guy who is just so weirdly obsessed with monsters (I love him). The beginning is a little rocky, but it improves greatly. I laughed out loud quite frequently and the art is great. I love Kui's distinct and interesting character designs and the way the plot unfolds into something complex and interesting.

[jctko]

read bastard out of carolina. different now

[bookish-bee]

Thank you @figuringthengsout for tagging me <3333

rules: list ten books that have stayed with you in some way. don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard - they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you

Soo tired it’s very late so I’ll be brief. In order I read them, not in order of importance to me

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - every mother and her daughter should read. My first profound read.

Crime and Punishment - the triumph of my fourteenth year. The Quest for the Perfect Translation pt.1 (it’s Nicolas Slater’s version. You’re welcome)

Ordinary People - found a similar person in Conrad. And cried. A lot.

The Plague - hahaha covid. Incredible. Began my love of Camus and then I got into philosophy and then died a little bit

All Quiet on the Western Front - the most influential a book has been on my life. Started the WWI interest and got me into the trench poets and started my research paper and so much more

The metamorphosis - learned so much about disability and what my family is. Read it so many times.

Inferno - got me through a rough spot. The Quest for the Perfect Translation pt.2 (I SWEAR BY Dorothy L Sayers. She’s incredible)

Patrick Modiano Missing Person - I can’t even talk about this one except to say that it changed me and that I want to write like him

Eichmann in Jerusalem - began my love of nonfiction and journalism and my obsession with the guardian and the Atlantic and the New Yorker, etc and now I spend so much money on newspapers and magazines I blame Arendt and her terrific reporting.

I didn’t include any poetry plays or short fiction because that would be cheating. Would require a whole other list for those.

And, note, these are the books that impacted me profoundly. Not exactly pleasureful books I got into, how it works for me in fandom. That would, again, be another list. (Aftg, sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie)

[loveanoutcast]

Bastard Out of Carolina is a masterpiece, it is so devastatingly good that I had to take many breaks in between as someone from the rural south of Texas from a Hispanic background. So much was so painfully relatable, so much made me cry, so much had me dissociating and unable to engage in conversations because all I could think of was Bone and what she embodies: innocence, wonder, pain, strength, and the feeling of wanting to be loved.

I read it while on my trip to Universal Studios which gave a twisted perspective of fun and grief. My friends watched me cry on the drive there, then laugh as we got on theme park rides. They watched me get lost in my thoughts of my own abusive past, but happily chatter of future projects. The battle of balance was out there. This book...it needs to be ready everywhere. People need to know, they need to see, it's an issue only a community can help to fix. When I reached the end, Uncle Neil's "I promise." echoed back to me as my own uncle's, "I got you."

A powerful book I am so grateful to have found. Going to go cry again now.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

[from my files]

* * * *

"Change, when it comes, cracks everything open."

 - Dorothy Allison

[Dorothy Allison btw lived on my hall when I was in college. The television [black and white with rabbit ears] was right outside my door, and she would sit there alone watching TV in her pajamas and curlers, chain smoking.  As most of us were prone to do - the chain smoking I mean.  Ugh.  

Hard to remember all those crazy years.  The years of the political assassinations, JFK, RFK, MLK, I remember watching coverage on those black and white TVs with the rabbit ears, sober, sad, thinking that the world might be coming to an end, going back to my room to write a paper on Chaucer. 

Chain smoking co-eds in curlers crying. When I heard that Dorothy had written "Bastard Out of Carolina" a lot of things made sense.]

* * * * *

“I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river. (253)” ― Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina

+

“I made my life, the same way it looks like you're gonna make yours—out of pride and stubbornness and too much anger. You better think hard, Ruth Anne, about what you want and who you're mad at. You better think hard.” ― Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina

[raurquiz]

#Happybirthday @anjelicahuston #anjelicaHuston #actress #director #author #AWalkwithLoveandDeath #ThePostmanAlwaysRingsTwice #ThisIsSpinalTap #TheIcePirates #TheWitches #TheAddamsFamily #BastardOutofCarolina #TheRoyalTenenbaums #TheLifeAquaticwithSteveZissou #TinkerBell #JohnWick3

[straydog733]

Watching Resolution: Bastard Out of Carolina (1996)

7. A film based on a book: Bastard Out of Carolina (1996)

List Progress: 2/12

TW: Child abuse, sexual abuse.

Some films are more about feelings than plots. On paper, Bastard Out of Carolina is about a little girl in South Carolina who is abused, and eventually she reaches a place where she is no longer abused, but a plot summary loses a lot of the value of this story about family, community, identity and shame. That being said, the 1996 film adaptation has enough gestures toward more intricate plotting, presumably to be found in the 1992 novel of the same name, that it ends up feeling a bit incomplete. But that doesn’t make the final product any less wrenching or powerful, just a bit more slight.

Ruth Anne “Bone” Boatwright is born into a large South Carolina family when her mother is fifteen and unmarried. She has no father in the picture, but she grows up surrounded by aunts, uncles, cousins and a half-sister who all fill out and color her life. But her mother Anney is still a child herself, and craves affection and love so much that she marries a cruel man named Glenn, who before long starts abusing Bone both physically and sexually. This is not a film for the faint of heart; there are fairly-explicit scenes of Bone, played by a 12 year old Jena Malone, being molested, and one can only hope that the set and filming were safe and healthy for the young actress. Malone gives such a stirring performance, tapping into the quiet suffering Bone goes through and the moments of light in the darkness, that it is clear how she was able to navigate the transition to a career as an adult actor..

The extended Boatwright family is a strong presence in the movie, but individuals end up feeling underbaked, as if they exist as a hivemind. Some family members flit in and out of the plot with indications that they have larger stories (particularly a cousin played by Christina Ricci), but we only learn a bit about them from Bone’s perspective. It’s a strong sense of community, which comes almost at the movie’s detriment, when it’s hard to keep all the blonde aunts separate from one another. The book probably has a lot to say about them, but the nature of adaptations is to narrow the scope of a story. It makes sense to keep the story more in Bone’s childhood perspective, even as the occasional narration provides an adult perspective looking back.

Bastard Out of Carolina won’t connect with everyone. It is a movie that dances on the edge of gratuity, and some audiences will feel that there is no reason to show as much of Bone’s suffering as the film does. But children like Bone are out there, and Bastard Out of Carolina tells her story to anyone who is able and willing to listen, and tells it with sensitivity and love.

Would I Recommend It: Yes, but take the trigger warnings seriously.

[agirlnamedbone]

“I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river.”

[tvckerwash]

I like to think that during pfl (using his s9 characterization, not s10) wash is the guy you go to when you want to know something (ah la a line in the fall of reach novel I believe where chief says the enlisted personnel always seem to know stuff bc wash is clearly enlisted).

he's in a position where he's privy to information from the higher-ups, and he's friendly enough with the lower rungs that he knows the gossip going around. as a bonus though, wash ain't no narc, so if you want that information you need to offer him something of equivalent exchange (consequently fueling the 'guy who knows things' thing). for example, north had to tell him about using equipment in the field in order to get him to tell him what his meeting with internals was about.

wash isn't the only guy who knows things, of course, but he's the guy who has the widest base of general knowledge. ct is also someone who knows things, but she's a lot more specific, and what she lacks in scale she more than makes up for with how in-depth her knowledge is. wash is where you learn about something from, ct is where you get all the juicy details (to the point of it almost being tmi). she also has an equivalent exchange policy, but people tend to be a bit more reluctant to get information from her because of what her knowledge is (and the borderline 'insane conspiracy theorist' energy doesn't help either).

florida? well...you don't wanna know what he knows. the cost is simply too high.

[firsttraintovictoriaville]

Wyoming is the most underrated bitchy mean girl (gender neutral) of the entire series

[jctko]

totally fucked up news coming from the capital: a girl just read a book that changed her life and she has to just participate in capitalism like nothing happened

[persephonethewanderer]

i love dorothy allison. every poem she writes, every essay, every novel. she captures that feeling of being sticky sweet with needs and wants. the shame that comes with want, especially, as a survivor. how to overcome that, how to live with that. it’s like perfect. she’s such a great comfort to me. it makes me feel less alone. yes i suffered immensely, yes i can explore it. yes i can still hope.