Bastard Out Of Carolina

Bastard out of Carolina is a 1992 semi-autobiographical novel by American writer Dorothy Allison. It was a finalist for the National Book Award and was adapted for film in 1996. Set in Greenville County, South Carolina, where the author herself grew up in the 1950s, it chronicles the childhood and adolescence of Ruth Anne “Bone” Boatwright against the backdrop of poverty, class-based discrimination, and both physical and sexual abuse. Like much of Allison’s work, Bastard out of Carolina engages thematically with the experiences of the working class and working poor in the American South, coming of age, the intersection of gender, sexuality, and class, and the impact of abuse on early childhood and adolescent development.

The novel is rooted in Allison’s own experiences of abuse at the hands of her stepfather and of coming to terms with her burgeoning lesbian identity in a community that was rural, patriarchal, and conservative. Allison was the first in her family to attend college, and it was there that she first became active in the second-wave feminist movement and was introduced to Marxist theory, both of which she credits as driving forces behind this novel, and which highlight The Intersections of Class and Gender.