She is the most famous literary lesbian since Gertrude Stein. Stein expatriated herself to Paris, once she figured out that she would always be a stranger in her own country. Dorothy Allison expatriated herself to California.
She grew up well below the poverty line in South Carolina. Her mother was 14 when she brought the first of three daughters into a life filled with unspeakable violence, the kind that makes most people look up, then look away.
Early on, Allison began to write the things she could not speak, winning small victories against the manner in which grown-ups treat children, especially men who abuse girls and women. She began to win awards for the gritty stories she made out of atrocities. One of her books was made into an Emmy-winning movie directed by Angelica Huston.
She is famously notorious, or notoriously famous. Students at the University of Tampa recently crowded into a large ballroom to hear the famous lesbian speak.
"How Many of You Are on Scholarship?"
About a third of the students raise their hands, some sheepishly.
Allison lets out a slow breath. "Do you know how wonderful that is? Do you know what that means? You're going to make it out - you've made it out already."
She asks them to raise their hands again, with feeling this time. She says to the ones who are from families that can pay their way, "You too. You are here. That means you have a chance."
She launches into a reading of an new story called "Jason Will Be Famous," about a young man who faces the hopelessness of his life by fantasizing about being kidnapped and held hostage in a basement for weeks. He will use the time to work out. "He's gonna get pretty" so that when he's rescued, he'll be Brad Pitt-handsome and his life will be magically transformed.
Jason's story returns to reality before it ends, of course, because in Dorothy Allison's work there is never a story-book ending. Her characters don't come out of the basement looking like Brad Pitt. Sometimes they don't make it out at all. Sometimes they're dead before they start, like Katy, the "Demon Lover" in Trash.
The students have been assigned to read two other stories from Trash, "River of Names," and "Mama." They are wide-eyed but respectful. One whispers, "She's so real."
Bastard Out of Carolina
It's still a title Allison wears proudly, although her Mama is long dead and the book is part of literary history. She answers to "Mama" now, raising a boy named Wolf with a woman named Alix, in Northern California.
"We live in Western Sonoma County, on the Russian River. The low-rent district. I knew there had to be a cash crop there. We have some extraordinary farmers."
She says the word "extraordinary" in her normal cadence, then again in drawn-out Carolina , "ex-tra-or-di-na-ry."
Two Or Three Things I know For Sure
Allison, at 61, is more like a lesbian ambassador than a danger to society. She tells young people what they need to know about staying in school and choosing to be parents rather than having babies accidentally.
Some students stay behind to ask about the fine points of turkey-baster pregnancies. She answers with patience and humor. Her son was conceived this way, with the help of a generous gay man.
In 1995, the New York Times printed a profile which called Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure "the Spoon River Anthology of trailer trash" and Allison herself "The Roseanne of Literature."
She wore the comparison with comedienne Roseanne Barr proudly. "We are both willing to be fools in public, to be despised . . . Don't mess with me, honey. I'm liable to pour gravy on you."
The Women Who Hate Me
That particular book title was inspired by charges from some feminists that she was spreading pornography by writing openly about sexuality. Being hated by her own community is not as likely now, with time and maturity. Her editor at Dutton, Carole DeSanti, called her "the Lourdes of writers."
"People come to her to be healed."
Raised Southern Baptist, Allison calls herself a Zen Baptist who once had aspirations to be a country gospel singer. She also loves rock and roll, long wanting to do a fictionalized account of Janis Joplin's life. Finally, in Cavedweller, she gave Delia Byrd the kind of life Joplin might have had if she hadn't catapulted to fame and died young of a drug overdose.
Deciding to Live
Allison is the ultimate survivor. Her books have given her a good life. Alix and Wolf have given her reasons to hold on. She laughs at the irony of finding herself a married woman, finally giving in to the insistence of their son that she and Alix ought to get married, while they could. That way if something happened to one of them, no one could disinherit Wolf or his surviving parent by saying "It's not like you're married, or anything."
"Marriage makes our son safe in the world," she told students at Hamilton College, speaking of how it felt the day that she and Alix finally hung their marriage certificate on the wall. The next day, voters passed Proposition 8, banning gay marriage in California.
Florida Roots
Although she lives on the other side of the country, Dorothy Allison still has connections to Florida, where her mother moved the family. Her sisters live near Orlando. She will return in May to teach a writing workshop in Miami, working again with Connie May Fowler. In the summer of 2010, she will teach in Assisi, Italy.
Allison was one of those scholarship kids, at the old Florida Presbyterian College, now Eckerd College. Because of National Merit Scholarships, she made it.
Sources: Conversation with the author at the University of Tampa on March 25, 2010.
Coughlin, Kerry Q. "Writer Dorothy Allison Advocates Civil Rights," January 28, 2010. The Spectator, A Hamilton College Student Publication
Jitter, Alexis. "The Roseanne of Literature," December 17, 1995. The New York Times
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