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The Women Who Hate Me: Poetry, 1980-1990
Whether writing about her dirt-poor Southern childhood, its brutalities and its love, or her lesbian lust--her outlaw sexuality--her poetry is cheeky, touching, and on target as she speaks the truth to the women she loves.
Allison was one of the key figures in what became known as the Feminist Sex Wars. She was a panelist at the 1982 Barnard Conference on Sexuality. It was picketed by the New York chapter of Women Against Pornography, who called the panelists "anti-feminist terrorists." Some protesters accused Allison of supporting the sexual abuse of children because of the graphic content in her literary works.
She responded to such critics in this collection, The Women Who Hate Me: Poems by Dorothy Allison.
Allison was one of the key figures in what became known as the Feminist Sex Wars. She was a panelist at the 1982 Barnard Conference on Sexuality. It was picketed by the New York chapter of Women Against Pornography, who called the panelists "anti-feminist terrorists." Some protesters accused Allison of supporting the sexual abuse of children because of the graphic content in her literary works.
She responded to such critics in this collection, The Women Who Hate Me: Poems by Dorothy Allison.
69 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
7 people are currently reading
1248 people want to read
About the author
Dorothy Allison
77 books1,739 followersDorothy Earlene Allison was an American writer from South Carolina whose writing focused on class struggle, sexual abuse, child abuse, feminism and lesbianism. She was a self-identified lesbian femme. Allison 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
December 6, 2019
Dorothy Allison's novel Bastard Out of Carolina just about ruined me. I read it, in its entirety, on a non-stop flight (ironically, one that departed out of Columbia, South Carolina), and I finished it right as we landed. I remember feeling completely hopeless as the other passengers went about the mundane business of gathering their belongings, and, ironically, I felt as though I did not belong. Why would I want to belong to the human race after that brutal tale of physical and sexual abuse? I was too wrecked by the story, and when you're too wrecked by a story, too abandoned down that rabbit hole without any rope, you want to set that book to fire and watch it burn.
I wanted to give Ms. Allison another try, so I turned this summer to Cavedweller (published in '98, six years after Bastard), and I could see, again, how strong her writing was, but I could also feel her holding back. Cavedweller is beautifully written, but the protagonist is gay. . . but then isn't gay. . . and everyone is flirting, but nothing is happening, and the caves are dark and everything is just so DAMNED VAGUE. That novel turned me into goddamned Barry White, crooning let's get it on to the pages every day. Then, no more crooning: LET'S GET IT ON! LET'S GET IT ON, PEOPLE! I took several angry walks on my favorite trail that week, kicking hard at the weeds. God, do I hate it when grown-ass consenting adults can't get it on.
I digress.
Okay, so, when I saw that Dorothy Allison had a collection of poetry, her first published work, I thought to myself yes, this is it, this is the book I want. Only, here's the plot twist: the book has gone out of print and is considered hard to find/expensive.
Well, guess what, booksellers? Don't you EVER tell a perimenopausal woman that a book she wants is unavailable to her. That's akin to setting me on fire. I declared I will have this book, and I did!
Once my copy arrived (thanks to Cheri and thriftbooks—I love you both!), I was greeted with this:
Do you remember the screaming?
The bushes where you hid
our stepfather running after us
caught me more often than you
ran blood down my body?
Do you remember that porch?
How I fell back onto the corner
cut deep between my legs
screamed for mama driving up
catching my scream in the pit of her fear
my blood in her hands
my hands between my legs
the scream dying in my throat
strangling on the certainty
I would die.
Bleeding across the car seat
mutely pushing at the blood
I knew it would ruin the seatcover
mama's uniform, your white curls.
I knew they'd have to cut away, throw out
the seatcover, your hair, my body.
Good God. I knew that Bastard was semi-autobiographical, but it was a different experience to read the very personal poetry that confirmed it.
I can only tell you this. . . if I ever have the misfortune to witness two little girls fleeing from their house, blood on their legs, screaming, a rapist stepfather running after them to beat or rape them some more. . . please, Lord Jesus, let me be in the midst of cooking up a batch of cornbread in a cast iron skillet and, with all the power imbued by the goddess Isis herself, let me smite that motherfucker on the head and render him dead.
I will gladly write my reviews from prison.
This is a powerful collection of poetry, worthy of whatever you need to do to get it. Ms. Allison is a lusty woman with a hearty appetite, both for food and women (I knew you were capable of a sex scene in Cavedweller, lady, you were holding out!). And, despite some staggering sexual and physical violence in her past, she has found a way to thrive.
I loved, loved, loved it.
I leave you with this, from “i chose this ground:”
Every Wednesday, every Sunday of her life
my grandma swept her yard, raked
the dust into smooth clean lines
the red dust that choked babies
and stained the boards of her porch.
She paid whatever rent was demanded
for the right to rake her yard
and when they put her out
three years before she died,
the uncles moved her to a yard
where the rocks had never been cleared
where glass and wire scraps threatened
our feet. She ignored the boxes sitting full,
went out to rake that ground
to clear herself a sense of place.
“Hold your ground,” she told me.
I wanted to give Ms. Allison another try, so I turned this summer to Cavedweller (published in '98, six years after Bastard), and I could see, again, how strong her writing was, but I could also feel her holding back. Cavedweller is beautifully written, but the protagonist is gay. . . but then isn't gay. . . and everyone is flirting, but nothing is happening, and the caves are dark and everything is just so DAMNED VAGUE. That novel turned me into goddamned Barry White, crooning let's get it on to the pages every day. Then, no more crooning: LET'S GET IT ON! LET'S GET IT ON, PEOPLE! I took several angry walks on my favorite trail that week, kicking hard at the weeds. God, do I hate it when grown-ass consenting adults can't get it on.
I digress.
Okay, so, when I saw that Dorothy Allison had a collection of poetry, her first published work, I thought to myself yes, this is it, this is the book I want. Only, here's the plot twist: the book has gone out of print and is considered hard to find/expensive.
Well, guess what, booksellers? Don't you EVER tell a perimenopausal woman that a book she wants is unavailable to her. That's akin to setting me on fire. I declared I will have this book, and I did!
Once my copy arrived (thanks to Cheri and thriftbooks—I love you both!), I was greeted with this:
Do you remember the screaming?
The bushes where you hid
our stepfather running after us
caught me more often than you
ran blood down my body?
Do you remember that porch?
How I fell back onto the corner
cut deep between my legs
screamed for mama driving up
catching my scream in the pit of her fear
my blood in her hands
my hands between my legs
the scream dying in my throat
strangling on the certainty
I would die.
Bleeding across the car seat
mutely pushing at the blood
I knew it would ruin the seatcover
mama's uniform, your white curls.
I knew they'd have to cut away, throw out
the seatcover, your hair, my body.
Good God. I knew that Bastard was semi-autobiographical, but it was a different experience to read the very personal poetry that confirmed it.
I can only tell you this. . . if I ever have the misfortune to witness two little girls fleeing from their house, blood on their legs, screaming, a rapist stepfather running after them to beat or rape them some more. . . please, Lord Jesus, let me be in the midst of cooking up a batch of cornbread in a cast iron skillet and, with all the power imbued by the goddess Isis herself, let me smite that motherfucker on the head and render him dead.
I will gladly write my reviews from prison.
This is a powerful collection of poetry, worthy of whatever you need to do to get it. Ms. Allison is a lusty woman with a hearty appetite, both for food and women (I knew you were capable of a sex scene in Cavedweller, lady, you were holding out!). And, despite some staggering sexual and physical violence in her past, she has found a way to thrive.
I loved, loved, loved it.
I leave you with this, from “i chose this ground:”
Every Wednesday, every Sunday of her life
my grandma swept her yard, raked
the dust into smooth clean lines
the red dust that choked babies
and stained the boards of her porch.
She paid whatever rent was demanded
for the right to rake her yard
and when they put her out
three years before she died,
the uncles moved her to a yard
where the rocks had never been cleared
where glass and wire scraps threatened
our feet. She ignored the boxes sitting full,
went out to rake that ground
to clear herself a sense of place.
“Hold your ground,” she told me.
May 25, 2025
"The women who hate me cut me
as men can't. Men don't count.
I can handle men. Never expected better
of any man anyway.
But the women,
the shallow-cheeked young girls the world was made for
safe little girls who think nothing of bravado
who never got over it by playing tough.
What do they know of my fear?
What do they know of the women in my body?
My weakening hips, sharp good teeth,
angry nightmares, scarred cheeks,
fat thighs, fat everything."
5/5
as men can't. Men don't count.
I can handle men. Never expected better
of any man anyway.
But the women,
the shallow-cheeked young girls the world was made for
safe little girls who think nothing of bravado
who never got over it by playing tough.
What do they know of my fear?
What do they know of the women in my body?
My weakening hips, sharp good teeth,
angry nightmares, scarred cheeks,
fat thighs, fat everything."
5/5
January 23, 2008
i got to pick her up from the airport a few years ago. i still wonder if i made an ass of myself that afternoon.
she's a working class sheroine of mine. she's also an incredible flirt with disarmingly smooth moves.
and i fucking love her words.
she's a working class sheroine of mine. she's also an incredible flirt with disarmingly smooth moves.
and i fucking love her words.
May 27, 2013
The Women Who Hate Me was first published as a chapbook in 1983 when Dorothy was 34; it was expanded and published in the form being reviewed here in 1991. Her short story collection Trash was first published in 1988 and an expanded version was published in 2002. She received mainstream recognition in 1992 when Bastard Out of Carolina was published.
The Women Who Hate Me: Poetry, 1980-1990 is available used at www.alibris.com .
An informative and fascinating interview with Dorothy Allison in 1995 is available on the web at http://www.tulane.edu/~wc/zale/alliso.... The following is a lengthy portion of the interview about The Women Who Hate Me poetry.
THE WOMEN WHO HATE ME is a series of poems most of which were written in 1982, and the summer of 1981-1983. First, the book was published in 1983, the first edition. Most of the poems were written following the Barnard Conference on sexuality in April, 1981. I was part of a panel there. The conference was designed to look at a complicated notion of sexuality and the whole design was about pleasure and danger, so they wanted to talk about all of the harm and the danger that exists around sexual issues for women. And they also wanted to talk about why sex and sexuality could be a source of power, authority and pleasure. Well, this was also 1981 and that was exactly the part of the discussion that was not supposed to be happening. When the Women's movement was essentially, the ---- was the anti-pornography movement. And it was not simply that there was a ---- of notions of what you were supposed to be saying about porn or anti-porn or any of that. The dominant notion was that we can't take care of all that until we take of this problem. Therefore, we can't talk about lesbian relationships, or incest. Everybody's gonna have to refrain from enjoying sexuality or women's pursuit of sexual pleasure, or heterosexual women teaching heterosexual men how to actually make them have an orgasm. We can't talk about any of that until we stop pornography and stop violence against women. These are the only two subjects we can discuss about sexuality. That's what happened at the Barnard Conference because the conference opened a whole range of discussion and the New York chapter of Women Against Pornography picketed. Not only did they picket, they published leaflets which named eight of us as being essentially anti-feminist terrorists. Not only did they distribute leaflets with our names and addresses and phone numbers up and down Broadway, they called each of us, the people we worked for and reported our various deviations in an attempt to get us fired. They called the University's development committee, you guys got a university, you know what happens when all of a sudden what is the equivalent to a Christian riot walks in and says "------all these lesbians and perverts and child sexual molesters over there talking". The day the conference happened, the program for the conference was confiscated and burned by the university officials, because they had some many interesting phone calls the week before. It turned into a nightmare. I know people who lost their lives because of that conference. A lot of people lost their jobs. Plenty of people had nervous breakdowns, left town, disappeared. I wrote poems. I wrote a series of poems. I left my lover, I stopped having sex, I went home and told my mother I want a real mastectomy, so then I wrote another series of poems. The book is largely about that. And a lot of us lost our religion. Jesus had turned out to be not what we thought he was. The Women's Movement was not the safe place we imagined it to be. Open discussion was not the rule as we had imagined. A lot of us had to hold back, hold ourselves up, and think very seriously about what we had been doing. It wasn't so easy as to say, "Y'know, I got the answer. I'm a feminist. I'm going to change the world. It is very simple." It ain't simple. And it is extremely complicated for working class women, because we tended to be the ones whose sexuality was not as --- as a lot of the middle class women who were at that conference, and who were perfectly willing to say, oh we'll wait. We'll do anti-porn first. But as a working class lesbian, the one thing you learn is that if you don't kill yourself, you do not drink yourself to death, if you do not find a girlfriend who will literally bash your head in, if you survive, one of the things you learn is that sexuality is the place where you cannot compromise, because it is so dangerous. That you can't always just talk about the bad side, you have to go over and find out why, why if sex is so dangerous, you're still gonna look for the one who can do it right for you. So, the poem THE WOMEN WHO HATE ME is essentially aimed at the women I couldn't speak at, couldn't speak to at the Barnard Conference because they were screaming at me. And it starts out,
The women who do not know me.
The women who, not knowing me, hate me
mark my life, rise in my dreams and shake out their loose hair throw out
their thin wrists, narrow their
already sharp eyes and say
Who do you think you are?
Lazy, useless, cunt sucking, scared and stupid
What you scared of anyway?
Their eyes, their hands, their voices.
Terrifying.
The women who hate me cut me
as men can't. Men don't count.
I can handle men. Never expected better
of any man anyway.
But the women,
shallow-cheeked young girls the world was made for
safe little girls who think nothing of bravado
who never got over by playing it tough.
What do they know of my fear?
What do they know of the women in my body?
My weakening hips, sharp good teeth,
angry nightmares, scarred cheeks,
fat thighs, fat everything.
(but the women who hate me cut me.)
Don't smile too wide. You look like a fool.
Don't want too much. You ain't gonna get it.
Say goddamn it and kick somebody's ass
that I am not half what I should be,
full of terrified angry bravado
BRAVADO
The women who hate me
don't know
can't imagine
life-saving precious bravado.
The fight you have with the people that you need are the most intense.
The Women Who Hate Me: Poetry, 1980-1990 is available used at www.alibris.com .
An informative and fascinating interview with Dorothy Allison in 1995 is available on the web at http://www.tulane.edu/~wc/zale/alliso.... The following is a lengthy portion of the interview about The Women Who Hate Me poetry.
THE WOMEN WHO HATE ME is a series of poems most of which were written in 1982, and the summer of 1981-1983. First, the book was published in 1983, the first edition. Most of the poems were written following the Barnard Conference on sexuality in April, 1981. I was part of a panel there. The conference was designed to look at a complicated notion of sexuality and the whole design was about pleasure and danger, so they wanted to talk about all of the harm and the danger that exists around sexual issues for women. And they also wanted to talk about why sex and sexuality could be a source of power, authority and pleasure. Well, this was also 1981 and that was exactly the part of the discussion that was not supposed to be happening. When the Women's movement was essentially, the ---- was the anti-pornography movement. And it was not simply that there was a ---- of notions of what you were supposed to be saying about porn or anti-porn or any of that. The dominant notion was that we can't take care of all that until we take of this problem. Therefore, we can't talk about lesbian relationships, or incest. Everybody's gonna have to refrain from enjoying sexuality or women's pursuit of sexual pleasure, or heterosexual women teaching heterosexual men how to actually make them have an orgasm. We can't talk about any of that until we stop pornography and stop violence against women. These are the only two subjects we can discuss about sexuality. That's what happened at the Barnard Conference because the conference opened a whole range of discussion and the New York chapter of Women Against Pornography picketed. Not only did they picket, they published leaflets which named eight of us as being essentially anti-feminist terrorists. Not only did they distribute leaflets with our names and addresses and phone numbers up and down Broadway, they called each of us, the people we worked for and reported our various deviations in an attempt to get us fired. They called the University's development committee, you guys got a university, you know what happens when all of a sudden what is the equivalent to a Christian riot walks in and says "------all these lesbians and perverts and child sexual molesters over there talking". The day the conference happened, the program for the conference was confiscated and burned by the university officials, because they had some many interesting phone calls the week before. It turned into a nightmare. I know people who lost their lives because of that conference. A lot of people lost their jobs. Plenty of people had nervous breakdowns, left town, disappeared. I wrote poems. I wrote a series of poems. I left my lover, I stopped having sex, I went home and told my mother I want a real mastectomy, so then I wrote another series of poems. The book is largely about that. And a lot of us lost our religion. Jesus had turned out to be not what we thought he was. The Women's Movement was not the safe place we imagined it to be. Open discussion was not the rule as we had imagined. A lot of us had to hold back, hold ourselves up, and think very seriously about what we had been doing. It wasn't so easy as to say, "Y'know, I got the answer. I'm a feminist. I'm going to change the world. It is very simple." It ain't simple. And it is extremely complicated for working class women, because we tended to be the ones whose sexuality was not as --- as a lot of the middle class women who were at that conference, and who were perfectly willing to say, oh we'll wait. We'll do anti-porn first. But as a working class lesbian, the one thing you learn is that if you don't kill yourself, you do not drink yourself to death, if you do not find a girlfriend who will literally bash your head in, if you survive, one of the things you learn is that sexuality is the place where you cannot compromise, because it is so dangerous. That you can't always just talk about the bad side, you have to go over and find out why, why if sex is so dangerous, you're still gonna look for the one who can do it right for you. So, the poem THE WOMEN WHO HATE ME is essentially aimed at the women I couldn't speak at, couldn't speak to at the Barnard Conference because they were screaming at me. And it starts out,
The women who do not know me.
The women who, not knowing me, hate me
mark my life, rise in my dreams and shake out their loose hair throw out
their thin wrists, narrow their
already sharp eyes and say
Who do you think you are?
Lazy, useless, cunt sucking, scared and stupid
What you scared of anyway?
Their eyes, their hands, their voices.
Terrifying.
The women who hate me cut me
as men can't. Men don't count.
I can handle men. Never expected better
of any man anyway.
But the women,
shallow-cheeked young girls the world was made for
safe little girls who think nothing of bravado
who never got over by playing it tough.
What do they know of my fear?
What do they know of the women in my body?
My weakening hips, sharp good teeth,
angry nightmares, scarred cheeks,
fat thighs, fat everything.
(but the women who hate me cut me.)
Don't smile too wide. You look like a fool.
Don't want too much. You ain't gonna get it.
Say goddamn it and kick somebody's ass
that I am not half what I should be,
full of terrified angry bravado
BRAVADO
The women who hate me
don't know
can't imagine
life-saving precious bravado.
The fight you have with the people that you need are the most intense.
Read
March 20, 2024"Dans la campagne terreuse où je suis née
les mots pour me nommer étaient si terribles
que personne ne les disait
alors en permanence au-dessus de ma tête
un langage silencieux me condamnait.
J'ai compris que la chose que personne ne disait
était celle contre laquelle on ne pouvait rien.
si personne ne disait Lesbienne
je ne pouvais pas dire fierté.
Si personne ne disait Tordue
je ne pouvais pas dire courage.
Si personne ne m'appelait
Bâtarde, bonne à rien, idiote, putain
je ne pouvais pas me saisir de ma propre parole,
de mon amour pour celles de mon espèce,
pour moi-même."
rien que ça, pfiou. Puis tous les vers où elle célèbre ses amantes, leur corps, sa sexualité, c'est quelque chose.
les mots pour me nommer étaient si terribles
que personne ne les disait
alors en permanence au-dessus de ma tête
un langage silencieux me condamnait.
J'ai compris que la chose que personne ne disait
était celle contre laquelle on ne pouvait rien.
si personne ne disait Lesbienne
je ne pouvais pas dire fierté.
Si personne ne disait Tordue
je ne pouvais pas dire courage.
Si personne ne m'appelait
Bâtarde, bonne à rien, idiote, putain
je ne pouvais pas me saisir de ma propre parole,
de mon amour pour celles de mon espèce,
pour moi-même."
rien que ça, pfiou. Puis tous les vers où elle célèbre ses amantes, leur corps, sa sexualité, c'est quelque chose.
July 31, 2024
That summer I did not go crazy,
spoke every day to my mama who insisted
our people do not go crazy.
We make instead that sudden evening
silence that follows the shotgun blast.
We stand up alone twenty years after
like a scarecrow in a field
pie-eyed, toothless, naming
our enemies and outliving them.
That summer I talked to death
like an old friend, a husky voice
whispering up from my cunt, echoing
around my knees, laughing.
That summer I did not go crazy
but I wore
very close
very close
to the bone.
I'm super grateful this little book is still in circulation at the library, since Allison is one of my favourite authors. So many lines gave me chills with how hard they hit. Favourite poems: "upcountry", "mattie lee gibson", "the women who hate me", "silence grew between us", "to the bone", "a woman like the ocean", and "the other side of the wall."
March 29, 2020
sad lesbian poetry ™
August 9, 2022
i read this book on the land at a womyn’s festival. it is now my favorite book of poetry. what sticks with me is: “the hope of women who love each other / women who truly love each other”
November 27, 2024
Je dois énormément aux éditions Hystériques et associées.
Stone Butch Blues, Valencia, Matérialisme trans et d'autres que je n'ai pas encore pu chroniquer.
A chaque fois, elles mettent sur mon chemin des livres qui m'ouvrent la tête avec tendresse et viennent se loger dans mon crane.
C'est le cas de Les Femmes qui me détestent de Dorothy Alison.
C'est la poésie lesbienne absolue. La chaleur des amantes et la froidure de la haine.
Car derrière les femmes qui me détestent, il y a les lesbiennes et les amantes. Ces figures qui marchent dans la nuit la tête brulante parce qu'on les a aspergées d'essences.
Je n'ai pas le même parcours lesbien que dorothy Alison mais je me retrouve dans sa plume et dans ses mots plus que nul part.
Elle parle pour elle
Elle parle pour nous toutes
Aux larmes qui sont montés pendant la lecture
Aux pages que j'ai du annoter pour y survivre.
Je vous laisse avec cet extrait qui se gravera dans nos peaux.
"
J'ai compris que la chose que personne ne disait
était celle contre laquelle on ne pouvait rien.
Si personne ne disait Lesbienne
Je ne pouvais pas dire fierté.
Si personne ne disait Tordue
Je ne pouvais pas dire courage.
Si personne ne m'appelait
Batarde, bonne à rien, idiote, putain
Je ne pouvais pas me saisir de ma propre parole,
de mon amour pour celle de mon espèce,
pour moi-même.
"
Stone Butch Blues, Valencia, Matérialisme trans et d'autres que je n'ai pas encore pu chroniquer.
A chaque fois, elles mettent sur mon chemin des livres qui m'ouvrent la tête avec tendresse et viennent se loger dans mon crane.
C'est le cas de Les Femmes qui me détestent de Dorothy Alison.
C'est la poésie lesbienne absolue. La chaleur des amantes et la froidure de la haine.
Car derrière les femmes qui me détestent, il y a les lesbiennes et les amantes. Ces figures qui marchent dans la nuit la tête brulante parce qu'on les a aspergées d'essences.
Je n'ai pas le même parcours lesbien que dorothy Alison mais je me retrouve dans sa plume et dans ses mots plus que nul part.
Elle parle pour elle
Elle parle pour nous toutes
Aux larmes qui sont montés pendant la lecture
Aux pages que j'ai du annoter pour y survivre.
Je vous laisse avec cet extrait qui se gravera dans nos peaux.
"
J'ai compris que la chose que personne ne disait
était celle contre laquelle on ne pouvait rien.
Si personne ne disait Lesbienne
Je ne pouvais pas dire fierté.
Si personne ne disait Tordue
Je ne pouvais pas dire courage.
Si personne ne m'appelait
Batarde, bonne à rien, idiote, putain
Je ne pouvais pas me saisir de ma propre parole,
de mon amour pour celle de mon espèce,
pour moi-même.
"
Read
August 29, 2023this was both riveting and very technically impressive. read it twice cause it's a short one. cw mentions/poetry quotes about childhood abuse/ rape.
her poetry has this deceptive quality of being very easy to read and follow, so you can't even tell that it's difficult work. i think the trick was her straightforward autobiographical passages like "Do you remember the screaming? / The bushes where you hid / our stepfather running after us". they hit hard but seem simple, but then the turn in the same poem, about her younger sister checking out stitches the author got, "my open mouth, my cheek, your hand / lifting the blanket / to see what i couldn't" has a LOT going on it that is daring and creepy and incestuous and invasive and intimate. or in "silence grew between us", the easiness of "When you touched me / my womb filled with light" is cut through with the ingenuity of "flooded light full of the smell / of baking eggplant, pure desire". idk! she's simple without being elegant or being overwrought, there's a lot of thought in here. that was the pull for me.
that and some truly /accurate/ feeling, complicated takes on queerness. "the women who hate me" is a complicated meditation on being estranged from your homophobic sister while also feeling a deep kinship with her, with all women who hate queer people, because of the shared trauma the author has with giving too much to abusive people regardless of gender. it's not as simple as other poems i've read about the tragedy of familial abandonment, it is about sort of her self-connection/self-image in relation to her maternal/sororal past too. or like "when i drink i become the joy of faggots" is VERY complicated, about homosexual repression, about being the terrifying but alluring specter of homosexual desire, about what being gay means for having a writing career but also being publically validated, all rolled into one poem. idk!
so she basically just has both content AND style and it's rough this book is hard to find, i had to ILL it, and it's like 100 dollars or more because it's out of print.
read this collection!
her poetry has this deceptive quality of being very easy to read and follow, so you can't even tell that it's difficult work. i think the trick was her straightforward autobiographical passages like "Do you remember the screaming? / The bushes where you hid / our stepfather running after us". they hit hard but seem simple, but then the turn in the same poem, about her younger sister checking out stitches the author got, "my open mouth, my cheek, your hand / lifting the blanket / to see what i couldn't" has a LOT going on it that is daring and creepy and incestuous and invasive and intimate. or in "silence grew between us", the easiness of "When you touched me / my womb filled with light" is cut through with the ingenuity of "flooded light full of the smell / of baking eggplant, pure desire". idk! she's simple without being elegant or being overwrought, there's a lot of thought in here. that was the pull for me.
that and some truly /accurate/ feeling, complicated takes on queerness. "the women who hate me" is a complicated meditation on being estranged from your homophobic sister while also feeling a deep kinship with her, with all women who hate queer people, because of the shared trauma the author has with giving too much to abusive people regardless of gender. it's not as simple as other poems i've read about the tragedy of familial abandonment, it is about sort of her self-connection/self-image in relation to her maternal/sororal past too. or like "when i drink i become the joy of faggots" is VERY complicated, about homosexual repression, about being the terrifying but alluring specter of homosexual desire, about what being gay means for having a writing career but also being publically validated, all rolled into one poem. idk!
so she basically just has both content AND style and it's rough this book is hard to find, i had to ILL it, and it's like 100 dollars or more because it's out of print.
read this collection!
June 28, 2025
child abuse and sisters what’s not to like
On one of my many reread : I always have this feeling about Dorothy's work. Whenever I reread it, I find that it improves with age. I'll never tire of it; there's always something new to discover. To me, it's the most fully realized lesbian work. Simply because her lesbianism is inextricably linked to how she tells her stories and how she sees the world. It also allows her to speak so well of the women who hate her. Loved, loved, loved, loved each and every poem
On one of my many reread : I always have this feeling about Dorothy's work. Whenever I reread it, I find that it improves with age. I'll never tire of it; there's always something new to discover. To me, it's the most fully realized lesbian work. Simply because her lesbianism is inextricably linked to how she tells her stories and how she sees the world. It also allows her to speak so well of the women who hate her. Loved, loved, loved, loved each and every poem
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December 26, 2023nice. been so long since ive connected that much to poetry
also finished Graffiti on Low or No Dollars yesterday but its not listen on here
also finished Graffiti on Low or No Dollars yesterday but its not listen on here
January 31, 2025
Une fois de plus, je suis à genoux devant les traductions de Noémie Grunenwald.
Lire ce recueil poétique dans le sillon des travaux d'Ellen Willis a été une approche judicieuse.
Lire ce recueil poétique dans le sillon des travaux d'Ellen Willis a été une approche judicieuse.
July 3, 2025
pas les mots…
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January 27, 2025pas une faiblesse dans tous les poèmes, pas une phrase ratée, extrêmement reconnaissant à la traduction pour ça
à tous points de vue : incroyable
à tous points de vue : incroyable
November 16, 2024
j’ai pas fini la postface mais je considère que je l’ai lu
July 6, 2008
"A Southern dumpling child", I discovered Dorothy Allison's in my mid-twenties and emulated her style in numerous therapeutic poems. She talked about what it felt like to be misunderstood and mis-labled due to socio-economic status, circumstance, and sexual preference. She speaks of the deep ties that bound her to family, especially the women.
excerpt from "to the bone"
That summer I did not go crazy
spoke every day to my mama who insisted
our people do not go crazy.
...
that summer I did not go crazy
but I wore
very close
very close
to the bone.
excerpt from "to the bone"
That summer I did not go crazy
spoke every day to my mama who insisted
our people do not go crazy.
...
that summer I did not go crazy
but I wore
very close
very close
to the bone.
March 12, 2009
Hard to get a copy of of this book. Worth it.
July 25, 2009
d. allison . . . my first chance to read her poetry . . . wow. . . .
my favorite poem in this collection: "little enough"
this book is worth a read . . .
my favorite poem in this collection: "little enough"
this book is worth a read . . .
August 4, 2024
This book is fired up. First released when the author was in her early 20s, "The Women Who Hate Me" presents Dorothy Allison with "No apologies, explanations, excuses, / nothing but me, my tomato, my rages, / my name, / my name." ("tomato song") The freedom informing the verses is frankly invigorating. I thoroughly enjoyed how her poems speak unabashedly of being a lesbian who has lust as a driving force in her life. Which isn't to say that the collection is strictly about how "Her touch drains heat from my crotch to my face..." as title poem memorably puts it. But you do feel that Sapphic sex is the shaper of the narrative, a survival tool, a lens through which anything can be viewed. That includes poverty, sibling rivalry, matrilineal bonds, grief, even friendships with queer men. ("when i drink i become the joy of faggots") In a way, "The Women Who Hate Me" feels like a queer precursor of brilliant Diane Seuss' "frank: sonnets" and "Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl." To say it's unfiltered would be to dismiss the craft except the craft (and the honesty) is impressive.
September 23, 2025
Dorothy Allison donated her personal library to Guerneville’s library and they gave me a copy of her poetry. It’s heavy and angry. Most of the poems are about her being a lesbian. In the 70s. In the South. She also grew up extremely poor and was sexually abused by her stepfather. Her mom had her at 15.
September 9, 2020
“Where then will I find the country
where women never wrong women
where we will sit knee to knee
finally listening
to the whole
naked truth
of our lives?”
A fascinating slice of literary history, this collection consists of the epitome of radical lesbian feminist poetry.
where women never wrong women
where we will sit knee to knee
finally listening
to the whole
naked truth
of our lives?”
A fascinating slice of literary history, this collection consists of the epitome of radical lesbian feminist poetry.
May 24, 2025
Wahou, d’habitude j’ai beaucoup de mal avec la poésie mais là…
Dorothy ma encore envoûter, elle dit les choses simplement mais ces tellement puissant. J’ai rien d’autre à dire a pars bravo les lesbiennes
Dorothy ma encore envoûter, elle dit les choses simplement mais ces tellement puissant. J’ai rien d’autre à dire a pars bravo les lesbiennes
July 19, 2017
A few of the poems early on in the collection, about hurt, were particularly savage.
May 25, 2020
Collection that insists on corporeality, not separating sex and feminism, and drawing lines of connection between straight and queer women, rather than separating them.
April 18, 2022
One to come back to. poems that bring up such viseral emotions and hidden thoughts.
December 14, 2024
bravo les lesbiennes !!!
March 9, 2025
Très bien postface bad longue mais intéressante
April 25, 2025
Favorite poems: The Women Who Hate Me, Liar, Tomato Song, To The Bone, We All Nourish Truth With Our Tongues, What is the Dream of Flesh?
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