“Bastard Out of Carolina” - A Marathon Public Reading for Dorothy Allison
She gave me a few minutes to make her scream: I’m giving back 12 hours
Do you remember what you were doing the first time you read Dorothy Allison? —Her novel Bastard Out of Carolina?
I do.
More than that, I remember walking down funky Guerrero Street in San Francisco, foggy summer day, windy windy, debris swirling up from the gutter, and Dorothy coming fast right up the block, facing me.
We knew each other, of course. Every hungry dyke author in San Francisco knew each other in the 1980s. We went to each other’s readings at deserted storefronts, seated in rusty chairs left over from the Al-Anon meeting that had just broken up.
She said:
GUESS WHAT? I SOLD MY BOOK!
WHAT? SOLD YOUR BOOK?
I SOLD MY BOOK. MY BOOK IS COMING OUT.
I started jumping up and down on the sidewalk.
Dorothy wasn’t the “jumping up and down” type. She was a femme but not girly that way. She once did a charity fundraiser auction where I was the emcee, and when I asked what she was going “auction” to the crowd, she said, “15 minutes to make me scream.”
If that sounds like a dare or a tough bet, you’d be right.
So anyway, I was squealing and jumping like a puppy on Guerrero St, with the high winds blowing out long hair this way and that, and she loved my reaction, because I think that’s what she was feeling inside, too.
We were both shocked.
Not shocked because she wasn’t ready, or good, or brilliant, but because neither of us had ever heard of a dyke getting a honest-to-god New York publisher book contract. Since— maybe Gertrude Stein? Did Gertrude Stein get a book advance?
Out-of-the-closet lesbians didn’t get to write for New York publishers. Nope. NONE. We were box office poison, everyone knew that.
Until that moment, in 1990, when she first heard that “yes.”
We hugged each other. “This is a big deal.” We said everything double. “This is a big deal.”
A lot of people remember reading Bastard Out of Carolina when it finally came out in 1992, because it was an unrelenting page-turner— a dyke’s view of Southern Trash Gothic, going past anything Flannery O’Conner had to dared say. O’Conner was one of her heroes.
Dorothy wrote from the POV of a working class female protagonist, a young girl, who would survive carefully-observed decades of speakable violent abuse— only “speakable,” because Dorothy didn’t pull any punches. No one had done that before.
It wasn’t a cliché. It wasn’t self-help. It wasn’t maudlin. It was spit-in-your-eye defiant.
Behind my carefully buttoned collar is my nakedness, the struggle to find clean clothes, food, meaning, and money.
Behind sex is rage, behind anger is love, behind this moment is silence, years of silence.
Dorothy had a blazing career, and she died in 2024; it was tough-going.
It took us a year, but her friends and family are staging a memorial event in Dorothy’s honor this fall— we’re throwing a marathon reading of Bastard Out of Carolina at this year’s LitQuake book festival.
Arion Press, Fort Mason, San Francisco.
Admission free of charge
Yes, you heard that right, 12 hours. We’re going to read Bastard cover to cover.
We are going to raise Cain! I’m going to read a chapter, along with old pals like Jewelle Gomez, Karen Fowler, Crowded Fire Theater, Poltergeist Theatre Project, and Word for Word.
Yes, there will be surprises and special guests.
There’s going to be red velvet cake, Dorothy’s favorite. I’m going to wear a scarlet evening gown I think she woulda liked. —Like Fancy!
Drop by by anytime, we’ll be unrelenting.
Rehearsing my chapter, feeling her words in my mouth again, is such a conjuring trick. It’s like reading her pages the first time.
It’s like having her here again in front of me, that sly smile of hers, when we knew we had pulled off something really really good.
Come join me! I’d love to hug you and share some Dorothy genius and kick-ass resilience with all of you . . .
Oh, I’m Also Doing a Sex and Death Thing, Obviously
I have to bring two evening gowns to the Bay in October, because I have a second Litquake event I’m looking forward to, as well.
Litquake, for those of you who haven’t been, is a multi-week book festival which began many years as a pub crawl! —Produced by our own beloved Jack Boulware. Now it’s in clubs, parks, and boites all over San Francisco, Marin, Oakland, and Berkeley. It’s dazzling, it really is.
On Friday, October 10th, I’m emceeing — and glamouring— a group reading called, “I took the lake between my legs.” —Women of a Certain Age talk about sex and death.
Clearly we have the upper hand on this!
I’m writing a poem for the occasion called “I’ve buried more than half my lovers.”
Okay, I’m trying to think of a more wry title. My late lovers were a bunch of wry-meisters. They wouldn’t want me to be blubbery. I won’t be! They deserve some first class props.
In Case You Missed It
The Women Who Hate Me
The reason Dorothy Allison planted her foot in your soul was because she was a poet, first. Her poetic mastery is what made every novel and essay sing.
Here’s a wonderful story from Blanche McCrary Boyd, about how she and Dorothy first met: https://blanche.substack.com/p/honoring-dorothy-allison
I'm going to scream for 15 minutes because I can't be there for this. Thank you for honoring an amazing writer, and for the wonderful photos you share.