A review by savaging
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison

5.0

I think this is a brilliant book. And a brave book. Not just because it talks about hard and personal things, but also because it talks about everything else, too. Another review on here complains that Allison didn't deliver on the 'white trash' promise, because she reveals that poor whites in the South also sometimes have love for each other, and their culture has some beauty and power. That reviewer wants this book to be more of a blood-curdling expose and less of a full, personal story. But this is exactly why I loved Bastard Out of Carolina.

I had a few quibbles with the writing. Like: too many of the chapters end with a repeated phrase. White supremacy is just an absent center of the writing, never fully dealt with.