Skin: Talking about Sex, Class and Literature [Paperback]

Dorothy Allison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1994

A fantastic collection of essays, autobiographical narratives, and performance pieces, including updated versions of earlier groundbreaking material with provocative new work by the lifelong feminist activist, controversial sex radical, and Southern expatriate writer with an attitude who brought us Bastard Out of Carolina, Trash, and The Women Who Hate Me. Funny, passionate, and compelling prose on what it means to be queer and happy about it in a world that is still arguing about what it means to be queer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Impassioned, personal and highly intelligent, Allison's ( Bastard Out of Carolina ) collection of published writings and addresses from the past decade examines issues of class and sexuality through the intricate lenses of autobiography and the literary experience. "I try to live naked in the world," says the writer, as she blends a tender reminiscence of her mother's death with an attempt to make sense of her mother's life. "I refuse the language and categories that would reduce me to less than my whole complicated experience," she proclaims, advancing the idea that those born "poor, queer, and despised" have an imperative to do more than simply survive. All of these finely wrought essays discuss the author's emotions and politics during years marked by poverty, abuse and the realization that her sexual nature was a threat even to lesbians and feminists. The power of the writing lies in its fluid, almost musical ability to move from one dimension to another, so that politics are laced with accounts of childhood wounds, sexual pleasures and an ongoing look at how the author's work as a writer of fiction meshes with her fervent will to speak only the truth. Strap-on dildos, backyard barbecues, family terrors, bygone lovers and the literary canon all find their way into this exuberant volume by a writer who exposes even the most painful realities with reverence and awe.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Allison, a self-proclaimed feminist activist, lesbian, writer, and teacher, came from a dirt-poor white family in South Carolina. Her origins inform and permeate these essays (as well as her autobiographical novel, Bastard Out of Carolina, LJ 3/1/92, which reflects much of the subject matter here). Ultimately, though, this collection is really more about the author's intimate feelings regarding the relation of her sexuality to her self-concept and society than about class and literature. In the two dozen essays, Allison addresses topics such as moving into a mixed neighborhood with her lover, discussing her lifestyle with female prisoners or a college class, and lesbian fiction and erotica. Allison is fiercely honest and fearless when describing a sometimes marginalized life among people who reject or patronize her because of her class or sexuality. Some patrons may be uncomfortable with by the explicit sexual descriptions. Recommended for women's and gay studies collections.
Janice Braun, Hoover Institution Lib., Stanford, Cal.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 261 pages
• Publisher: Firebrand Books (April 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563410443
• ISBN-13: 978-1563410444
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #532,829 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #24 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Biographies & Memoirs > Lesbian

More About the Author

Dorothy Allison is the bestselling author of several novels including Bastard Out of Carolina, Cavedweller, and Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure. The recipient of numerous awards, she has been the subject of many profiles and a short documentary film of her life, Two or Three Things but Nothing For Sure.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Skin is her best work ever., July 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Skin: Talking about Sex, Class and Literature (Paperback)

Book Review The Forgotten Masterwork: Dorothy Allison's Skin in light of Two of Three Things I Know for Sure

Tamara M. Powell

Two or Three Things I Know for Sure. Dorothy Allison. New York: Dutton Books, 1995. 94 pp.

Skin: Talking About Sex, Class and Literature. Dorothy Allison. Ithaca: Firebrand, 1994. 261 pp.

Two or Three Things I Know for Sure has been widely hailed as the newest offering from recent Showtime special Bastard Out of Carolina author Dorothy Allison. The slim novel can be seen as a coming together of the anger Allison poured into Bastard and Trash and the growth she has experienced as she has matured and become a parent herself. Trash reveals the struggles behind her decision to live, while Two or Three Things elucidates the wisdom she has gained along the way. However, between Trash and Two or Three Things, Allison created another work, Skin: Talking About Sex, Class and Literature. And while Two or Three Things has gained much attention, Skin has been all but ignored. But it is Skin that reveals the growth and thought that took place between Trash and Two or Three Things, and instead of looking inward, as Allison's other works do, Skin looks outward, allowing Allison to analyze, contemplate, and theorize upon how she sees the world. Allison is known as a writer who tells her stories over and over. She is conscious of this--and opens Two or Three Things with the line "Let me tell you a story" (1). "Two or three things I know for sure" she closes the first chapter, "and one of them is what it means to have no loved version of your life but the one you make" (3). Allison makes version after version of many events of her life, from scaring her sisters with her stories, to being raped by her stepfather, to receiving glasses from the Lions Club, one of Allison's many talents is that she can make the reader listen to the same story over and over, awestruck, mesmerized. Allison creates herself and re-creates herself in all her works. "Behind the story I tell is the one I don't" she writes, "Behind the story you hear is the one I wish I could make you hear" (Two or Three 39); "The story I do not tell is the only one that is a lie" (71). But before these stories, before these pictures in Two or Three, there was Skin. Often ignored, it is Skin that pierces below the stories and drawl to stress the importance of addressing the emotions in writing. If Bastard, Trash, and Two or Three are Allison in practice, then Skin is Allison in theory. And it's no ordinary theory. In Skin Allison stresses the importance of addressing emotions in writing. Her quest to divulge her own fear, confusion, shame, lust and love spans twenty-three loosely related essays which discuss what prompted her to read, what prompted her to write, and what her writing is and means to her. However, this is not just a work on understanding Dorothy Allison; she includes large amounts of herstory, both social and political. Like many other of her works, Skin describes how active Allison was in the lesbian feminist movements of the 60, 70s and 80s. Also like many of her other works, it describes her journey from her childhood in a backwater South Carolina shack to her home in the suburbs of New York, through poverty, child abuse, finding herself as a lesbian and joining the feminist and lesbian communities around her. Like her other works, Skin is a description of a very determined woman's life. And her candor draws the reader in, giving the reader points of reference and view so clearly that the reader can position himself or herself in relation to Allison. Unlike in Two or Three, where the reader must take Allison's perspective for herself in order to take the story in, Skin makes it possible for the reader to almost debate with Allison on issues. In a sense, this ignored novel might tell more about Allison, make her more human, than all of her other works combined. All twenty-three of these easily accessible--if you don't mind a lot of graphic sex--essays foster critical thinking on a very deep level.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essays on class, racism, sexuality, and literature, August 17, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Skin: Talking about Sex, Class and Literature (Paperback)

The extraordinary Dorothy Allison can write fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and essays. Skin is her contribution to the essay genre, a collection of two dozen bits of astute rambling across a crazy quilt of subjects stitched together by the fierce honesty her readers have come to expect from all of her writing. Coming from a poor white trash family in South Carolina, she traveled beyond her origins thanks to a rampant intelligence that nothing could dull. A feminist before the word was invented, Allison is also a proud card-carrying lesbian, a writer, mentor, teacher, lecturer, and a woman who is always generous to other writers. Skin deals more explicitly and in greater depth with erotica and sexuality than her other works, so readers would do well to be forewarned. But if you're a Dorothy Allison fan, this is NOT a book to be missed.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book about SEX!, May 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Skin: Talking about Sex, Class and Literature (Paperback)

An opportunity to get thinking about a few "difficult" subjects, while enjoying a few refreshing lines of thought as well as a no-nonense yet witty style.Being a woman, gay or poor not a requisite, although it might help. If you're neither of the three, buy the book anyway, you might learn something (I did).