Dorothy Allison
| Dorothy Allison | |
|---|---|
Allison at the Miami Book Fair International 2011
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| Born |
April 11, 1949 Greenville, South Carolina |
| Occupation | writer, poet, novelist |
| Nationality | American |
| Subject | class struggle, child and sexual abuse, women, lesbianism, feminism, and family |
| Literary movement | Feminism |
| Spouse | Alix Layman |
| Children | Wolf |
| Website | |
| www |
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Dorothy Allison (born April 11, 1949) is an American writer from South Carolina whose writing expresses themes of class struggle, sexual abuse, child abuse, feminism and lesbianism. She is a self-identified lesbian femme. She has won a number of awards for her writing, including several Lambda Literary Awards. In 2014, Allison was elected to membership in the Fellowship of Southern Writers.
Dorothy E. Allison was born on April 11, 1949 in Greenville, South Carolina to Ruth Gibson Allison, who was fifteen at the time. Her single mother was poor, working as a waitress and cook. She married but when Dorothy Allison was five, her stepfather began to abuse her sexually. This abuse lasted for seven years. At age 11 Allison told a relative about it, who told her mother. Ruth forced her husband to leave the girl alone, and the family remained together. The respite did not last long, as the stepfather resumed the sexual abuse, continuing for five years. Allison suffered mentally and physically, contracting gonorrhea from him that was not diagnosed and treated until she was in her 20s. The untreated disease left her unable to have children.
The family moved to central Florida to escape debt. Allison had witnessed family members die because of the extreme poverty. She was the first person in her family to graduate from high school, succeeding as a student despite her chaotic home life. She qualified as a National Merit Scholar. At age 18, she left home and enrolled in college.
In the early 1970s, Allison attended Florida Presbyterian College (now Eckerd College) on a National Merit scholarship. While in college, she joined the women's movement by way of a feminist collective. She credits "militant feminists" for encouraging her decision to write. After graduating with a B.A. in anthropology, she did graduate studies in anthropology at Florida State University.
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