Dorothy Allison, an Autobiography

 

Bastard Out of Carolina serves as Allison's story:

 

She was born in 1949. Her mother, Ruth, was a fifteen-year-old waitress in Greenville, South Carolina. Her father was a deadbeat who sold faulty insurance policies to poor blacks, and who disappeared even before Allison was born. When Allison was four, her mother married the stepfather who began his pattern of sexual abuse and violence almost immediately. When she was eleven, Allison told a cousin about her stepfather's repeated atrocities. Her mother picked up her three daughters and left briefly but returned to her husband (Reynolds).