Bastard Out of Carolina

Name: Bastard Out of Carolina
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)
Author: Dorothy Allison
ISBN: 9780525563396

Dorothy Allison • 1992

Devastation Rating

Existential Dread

abuse poverty South family

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Our Take

Bone is illegitimate by the state's accounting and disposable by her stepfather's. Allison writes Southern poverty and child abuse without aesthetic distance — the ugliness is the point, the love in the middle of it is the point, and the final act of abandonment is the most honest ending in American fiction.

Appears In

► Coming of Age — When Growing Up Breaks You ► Sexual Assault — The Silence After ► Trafficking and Exploitation — The Bodies the System Discards ► Foster Care — The State as Parent

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