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Trash

4.07 of 5 stars 4.07 · rating details · 2,418 ratings · 112 reviews

Trash, Allison's landmark collection, laid the groundwork for her critically acclaimed Bastard Out of Carolina, the National Book Award finalist that was hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "simply stunning...a wonderful work of fiction by a major talent." In addition to Allison's classic stories, this new edition of Trash features "Stubborn Girls and Mean Stories,...more

Paperback, 224 pages

Published September 24th 2002 by Plume (first published October 1st 1988)

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Dec 16, 2008 Jude rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: class-work, the-f-word

This is where i fell in love with Dorothy Allison - this is where i found a voice like no other and first heard her clear invocation of story as not merely survival but triumph - life itself lived with a degree of accountability that is specific to finding the language with which to face it.

7 likes · like · see review

Jan 19, 2012 Amory Blaine added it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011, memoirs, short-stories

"We are under so many illusions about our powers...illusions that vary with the moon, the mood, the moment. Waxing, we are all-powerful. We are the mother-destroyers, She-Who-Eats-Her-Young, devours her lover, her own heart; great-winged midnight creatures and the witches of legend. Waning, we are powerless. We are the outlaws of the earth, daughters of nightmare, victimized, raped, and abandoned in our own bodies. We tell ourselves lies and pretend not to know the difference. It takes all we ha...more

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Sep 17, 2008 Lily rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dorothy Allison writes in the Southern tradition with a twist--she's a lesbian and she's not ashamed of it, even coming from a dirt poor family that places importance on how many babies you can produce and how well you marry. This slim book is a collection of short memoir narratives that read as if Allison is sitting right in front of you, sipping on sweet tea and smoking a cigarette, while she divulges all of her secrets. Some secrets are raw and painful while others are delightful and sensuous...more

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Mar 26, 2013 Sean rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

Another musty, wrinkled closet find discovered at my secret bunker in the Puerto Rican mountain jungle, this book's voice rose up to join the incessant calling of the coquís and the maniacal chuckling of the screech owl. I welcomed this voice inside me, where she built a makeshift shotgun shack and set to telling her stories. Allison grew up in South Carolina, where I used to live, though she lived in a much different part of the state. Her family was large and poor and members of it died with a...more

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May 16, 2012 Carl Brush rated it 5 of 5 stars

Dorothy Allison is one of my favorite people, even though I don’t know her. I’ve shaken her hand and seen/heard her speak at Squaw Valley and at Tin House, though, and I’ve read enough of her work to know that she is one rare package of compassion, humor, and bitterness. Trash is full of early stories, stories from what she calls her “yellow pages”
in the forward, those pages being a legal pad on which she originally scribbled down recollections of her childhood with no thought of publication. Sh...more Dorothy Allison is one of my favorite people, even though I don’t know her. I’ve shaken her hand and seen/heard her speak at Squaw Valley and at Tin House, though, and I’ve read enough of her work to know that she is one rare package of compassion, humor, and bitterness. Trash is full of early stories, stories from what she calls her “yellow pages”
in the forward, those pages being a legal pad on which she originally scribbled down recollections of her childhood with no thought of publication. She’d go back home to the motel where the war on poverty government put her up while she was in training for a position with the Social Security administration. There, with time on her hands and no money to go out, she’d write. Later on, she rewrote, then rewrote again. And, I guess, again. Then there were some stories added on, and what we end up with is a series of stories (“linked” as they like to say now.) about growing up in a particular house in a particular community that the world labeled as garbage.

Allison is not on a mission to sentimentalize or excuse her people--or herself. Most of her cousins, she says, were dead or drunk or pregnant or toothless at a young age. ‘There were so many we were without number and, like tadpoles, if there was one less from time to time, who counted? My maternal great-grandmother had six sons, five daughters. Each one made at least six. Some made nine. Six times six, eleven times nine. They went on like multiplication tables. They died and were not missed.” She herself was the victim of a molesting and physically abusive stepfather whom her mother (who had her while unmarried at fifteen) couldn’t quite figure out how to leave.

Though she doesn’t gloss over the uglies, she writes with great passion about the virtues, makes vicious (and well-deserved) fun of writers and others who deign to judge, to pretend they know what it’s like to grow up poor in Greenville, NC because they’ve read a little Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor. Allison uses “trash” to define herself in the defiant way that black people us “Nigger” and gays use “Queer.” We can call each other that name, but you better not. In truth, we have no other literary voice that I know of from Allison’s people. Neither Faulkner nor O’Connor, as effectively as they wrote about the south, came from the redneck poor life and folks from which Allison escaped. And neither of them was (at least openly) gay. And Allison is not only open, but fierce about it.

These stories are autobiographical, but they are not memoir. They stand as true pieces of fiction, and you can’t tell which is the biography and which is the made up. “Gospel Song,” is a good example, the story of her albino friend with parents who run a gospel singing troupe. Whether or not there really was a Shannon Pearl in Allison’s life, her friendship with another outcast becomes a true symbol of what it means to live reviled and rejected. And the closing story, “Compassion,” about her mother’s death is as touching a piece of prose as you’ll ever read. Love and cruelty nestled side by side. Almost operatic.

If you’re looking for booze, sex, and pot, you’ll find plenty of that in Trash as well. But what you’ll find mostly is well-crafted, deeply true and wrenching stories drawn directly from a worlds you can barely imagine.

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Feb 07, 2011 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2011

A fantastic storyteller. These stories are fiction, but they come straight from Allison's life, says the prologue, sort of, and it shows. I'm not sure exactly how close to memoir these stories are, but they feel 100% real. An interesting voice, where everything is completely straightforward and erudite, then Allison throws in a "gonna" or something similar. And it works. Things seem to be arranged fairly chronologically, with early stories concerning the narrator's childhood, and so on. A strang...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Mirrordance rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: narrativa, racconti, lesbian, lesbismo, lgbt, lsb

Non amo i racconti se non in rarissimi casi. Questo è uno di quelli. Racconti che in un certo qual modo compongono un vero e proprio romanzo. Godibile e fruibile. Una scrittura a volte dura ed un po' grezza, apparentemente e occasionalmente sgrammaticata (questo è uno di quei casi in cui vorresti avere sottomano l'originale).
Un altro mondo, duro e violento eppure... dei flash emotivi degli istanti di deja-vù..... pare a volt4e assurdo parlare di riconoscimento o identificazione con un mondo asso...more

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Mar 09, 2009 Peachy rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: addiction, disturbing, mental-illness, short-stories, family

Highly graphic, audacious and twisted, this book of short stories is the precursor to Bastard out of Carolina. Although I didn't enjoy Trash nearly as much as Bastard, I did favour 'Don't Tell Me You Don't Know' and 'I'm Working On My Charm.'

www.booksnakereviews.blogspot.com

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Dec 22, 2010 Matt rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is powerful, intense, moving writing. The introduction alone is a stunning piece of work, describing the author's decision "to live" and to write her stories. It is a testament to the power the creation of literature has to save and sustain a life. The standard frequenty cited to determine whether or not someone is a "real writer" is whether or not that person would write if they knew no one would ever read their work. In Dorothy Allison's case, the choice between writing and not writing is...more

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Feb 13, 2010 Katie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2010

Dorothy Allison is without a doubt a wonderful storyteller. I think I just like the format of a novel better than short stories. I like her character development and you just don't get as much of that in the shorter form.

One interesting thing about this collection was that you could see pieces of Bastard Out of Carolina in-progress. There were some overlapping characters (Reese, Mama, Aunt Alma) and stories and even word for word excerpts. I only noticed this because one quote in particular from...more

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Dec 10, 2011 Sharada rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Most short story collections, if not all, I've read before contained stories that differed from each other in terms of characters, narrator, and setting. All the stories in Trash are told in Allison's semi-(or more accurately nearly-?)autobiographical voice but they differ in when they happen, where she is and as a result, *who* she is. It was very interesting to see just how different that narrative voice could be, not just as a result of different times or places, but also because of the multi...more

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Mar 21, 2010 Natalie rated it 3 of 5 stars

I found the stories compelling. Usually, I dislike writers who only write what they know, but Allison has a rich enough life to pull it off. There are moments when the rawness comes through beautifully, but other times I struggled to follow the story lines. Perhaps they weren't meant to be read as stories. I often found the writing overly informative, rather than descriptive. In other words, it was hard to visualize the surroundings. The voices were so strong, but they seemed to float in space....more

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Jan 27, 2011 Ann Douglas rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, short-stories, writing, reviewed, read-in-2011

This collection of short stories by Dorothy Allison is as much a book about writing as it is a book of powerfully written short stories. The book's introduction explains how the author found her voice as a writer and what she has learned about writing and herself since this book was first published. The stories themselves are beautifully written and demonstrate tremendous insights into human relationships.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book. (Each quote has been added to the GoodRe...more This collection of short stories by Dorothy Allison is as much a book about writing as it is a book of powerfully written short stories. The book's introduction explains how the author found her voice as a writer and what she has learned about writing and herself since this book was first published. The stories themselves are beautifully written and demonstrate tremendous insights into human relationships.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book. (Each quote has been added to the GoodReads quotes database.)

"Before I published any of my own stories, I read a great many stories by people as passionate about writing as I was, and I learned something from everyone I read -- something most important what I should not try to write." — Dorothy Allison (Trash)

"I did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft." — Dorothy Allison (Trash)

"Why write stories? To join the conversation." — Dorothy Allison (Trash)

"I did not imagine anyone reading my rambling, ranting stories. I was writing for myself, trying to shape my life outside my terrors and helplessness, to make it visible and real in a tangible way, in the way other people's seemed real -- the lives I had read about in books." — Dorothy Allison (Trash)

"I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself." — Dorothy Allison (Trash)

"When my mama was twenty-five she already had an old woman's hands, and I feared them. I did not know then what it was that scared me so. I've come to understand since that it was the thought of her growing old, of her dying and leaving me alone. I feared those brown spots, those wrinkles and cracks that lined her wrists, ankles, and the soft shadowed sides of her eyes." — Dorothy Allison (Trash)

"Piece by piece, my mother is being stolen from me." — Dorothy Allison (Trash)

"Twenty years after we had left so fierce and proud, we were all right back where we had started, yoked to each other and the same old drama." — Dorothy Allison (Trash)(less)

1 like · like · see review

Oct 25, 2011 Ammie rated it 5 of 5 stars

God, I love this book. Dorothy Allison always astounds me no matter how many times I read her work, because there are moments in all of her books where I just utterly believe in what she's telling me as truth, even if it's fiction. She breaks my heart open and seduces me and makes me hungry for pork fat and biscuits, every damn time. I don't love every single story in this collection, but certain ones--"River of Names", "Mama", "A Lesbian Appetite"--and above all the introduction to the first ed...more

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May 12, 2013 Larry Bassett rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, southern-writers

This is an amazing book. It is filled with stories. Some stories of brutality that you pray you will never experience and some about the strength of families that you might look for, even hope for.

My first book by Dorothy Allison was Bastard Out of Carolina. I gave it five stars http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25... and wanted to read more. It took me six months to pick up the next book. I picked Trash because I like short stories and it is one of Allison’s first published books, maybe the fi...more

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Jun 05, 2012 Real Supergirl rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: memoir

I'm putting Trash in memoir because that's the way it reads, and Allison has spoken about how much of what she has written about is based directly on her own life.

I'm usually not a big fan of "fiction" which is really memoir. I guess I want a little bit of displacement - it may be therapeutic for you to write about your traumatic life experiences but that doesn't make it pleasant to read.

So why do I give Trash 4 stars? Because some - not all, but some - of the stories in this collection read m...more

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Mar 07, 2012 Megan rated it 5 of 5 stars

The shelf is called "neglected to finish", but there was nothing as benign as neglect here at all. I read "River of Names", about blue-under-the-linen Shannon and the smell of barbecue, and vomited. Leaned up against the tiles of the bathroom wall, I went back to the very beginning of the book, reading out loud over and over until the words didn't mean anything anymore.
Allison's prose is beautiful but her narrative, the image she draws, it is not beautiful at all. It is line after line of what...more

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Sep 04, 2008 Izetta Autumn rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: shortstory

"The central fact of my life is that I was born in 1949 in Greenville, South Carolina, the bastard daughter of a white woman from a desperately poor family, a girl who had left the seventh grade the year before, worked as a waitress, and was just a month past fifteen when she birthed me. That fact, the inescapable impact of being born in a condition of poverty that this society finds shameful, contemptible, and somehow oddly deserved, has had dominion over me to such an extent that I have spent...more "The central fact of my life is that I was born in 1949 in Greenville, South Carolina, the bastard daughter of a white woman from a desperately poor family, a girl who had left the seventh grade the year before, worked as a waitress, and was just a month past fifteen when she birthed me. That fact, the inescapable impact of being born in a condition of poverty that this society finds shameful, contemptible, and somehow oddly deserved, has had dominion over me to such an extent that I have spent my life trying to overcome or deny it. There was this concept of the “good” poor, and that fantasy had little to do with the everyday lives my family had survived. The good poor were hardworking, ragged but clean, and intrinsically honorable. We were the bad poor. We were not noble, not grateful, not even hopeful. We knew ourselves despised."

So begins Dorothy Allison's introduction to this updated edition of her short story collection, entitled, Trash. Allison, perhaps best known for her semi-autobiographical book, Bastard out of Carolina, in Trash delivers stories rendered with true talent and a skill with the genre.

I learned about Allison from a friend, who suggested that I would really enjoy her work. How right she was! I'm saddened that I'm just reading Allison, but heartened 9and grateful to my friend)to have finally been introduced.

Often you hear a reader, wirter, or even a reviewer, talk about a book that changed their lives, opened a door for them, or encouraged them along their own path. I hadn't yet fully experienced that. Surely as a child there were books I adored, that changed me, but as an adult, there'd been few books to have that claim. Allison fills that void. For one, Allison writes to survive - and she writes most powerfully to those who read to survive.

Some of my favorite stories in the collection include, "Mama," "A Lesbian Appetite," and "Compassion." For anyone who's ever sat with someone as they've transitioned, this short story, is sure to evoke memories, a bit of sorrow, and hope.

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Sep 13, 2011 Kathy Hiester rated it 5 of 5 stars

Trash by Dorothy Allison is written in the Southern custom with a twist, she's an out and proud. Coming from an underprivileged family that places significance on how many babies you can produce and how well you marry this collection of short memoir narratives is written as if Allison is sitting right in front of you exposing all of her secrets. The stories can be agonizing but also sensual and charming.

5 Stars

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Dec 23, 2008 E. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Learning not to hate yourself is crucial to not only self preservation but also with figuring out how to share your ideas and experiences. Dorothy Allison does that for me. By baring all about abuse, growing up poor, and lurid nasty sex she helps create a voice for all of us.The babe is cathartic. The babe is legendary. The babe makes me wanna go to college.

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Jul 29, 2009 Sharyl rated it 4 of 5 stars

These stories were written early in Dorothy Allison's career, and they are edgy, angry, and honest. Some of the stories are more detailed, or similar accounts of things that happened in her most famous novel, Bastard Out of Carolina. Some of the stories also portray her love life, and others are about her complicated relationships with family.

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Dec 30, 2011 Ariel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, queer-characters, recommended, short-stories

These stories are gritty, shocking, and depressing, but hell, are they fantastic. Occasionally they get repetitive, since they're all centered around the same theme (growing up a poor, "white trash" lesbian in the American South), but you honestly don't realize that until after you're done with the book, because her writing is so alive.

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Jan 07, 2010 Nicole Tantoco rated it 3 of 5 stars

One thing I have to say is that I really love Dorothy Allison's way with language. I particularly loved "Monkeybites" and her introduction. After awhile though, all the stories start to sound the same to me and her tone becomes bitter and tiring. This kind of disappointed me because I found the book was so charming at the start.

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Nov 08, 2012 Samantha Davenport rated it 5 of 5 stars

Any book which makes me openly laugh or weep gets five stars. Several stories about childhood and family left tears on my cheeks; even if she hadn't said so in her introduction it is obvious Ms Allison writes from the heart. This is also true of stories about love and sex: she is the lesbian Erica Jong.

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Feb 01, 2011 Rhonda Browning White rated it 4 of 5 stars

Painfully honest, gritty and smashingly good. This book of short stories is not for the timid. It's Allison's struggle with poverty, feminism, lesbianism, education and the emotional pain caused by all these things.

"River of Names" caused my throat to tighten. "Monkeybites" made me smile. Each of these stories caused emotion of one sort or another, from disdain to triumph, and often, anger. I wanted to protect this woman one moment, and give her a good shaking the next. Her decisions weren't al...more

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Jan 01, 2013 Melody Ulrich rated it 3 of 5 stars

While I adored Bastard out of Carolina, I wasn't as moved by this collection of short stories. Often Allison will hit the colloquial 'white trash' cliches so hard it feels forced. When she just let's things flow as they are, she has much more power in her writing.

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Apr 16, 2007 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: edgy chicks

Shelves: queerbookgroup

This book of Dorothy Allison's early short stories is violent, painful, gritty dirty, and totally worth the read. Some of the book group chicks disagreed and found it too harsh to be able to enjoy reading it. I thought that the brutal reality of the stories is what made the book gripping and kept me turning the pages.

The title refers to the common phrase, poor white trash. Dorothy grew up in a very poor, very large, very dysfunctional, family in the south. My only complaint is that Allison's mem...more

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Jun 25, 2009 Melisa Resch rated it 5 of 5 stars

get it. worship dorothy allison. give her overly long and unwanted hugs. ask if you can make a movie about her. pretend you don't mind when she politely refuses. bury your hurt in pulled pork sandwiches.

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Mar 10, 2010 Kelly rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: gender-sexuality, race-ethnicity-socialclass

Many of the early stories in "Trash" lay the foundations for Dorothy Allison's later novel "Bastard Out of Carolina." I find all the stories refreshingly REAL. Allison fills a space in literature that's too often lost, forgotten, or disregarded. Glad to have read this collection.

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Jun 17, 2009 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Dorothy Allison's semi-autobiographical collection of short stories is a well-written, compelling, albeit grim and graphic retelling of her impoverished upbringing in the rural south.

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About Dorothy Allison

Dorothy Allison is an American writer, speaker, and member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Themes in Allison's work include class struggle, child and sexual abuse, women, lesbianism, feminism, and family.

Allison's first novel, the semi-autobiographical Bastard Out of Carolina, was published in 1992 and was one of five finalists for the 1992 National Book Award.

Allison founded The Independe...more

More about Dorothy Allison...

Books by Dorothy Allison

Skin: Talking about Sex, Class and Literature

Bastard Out of Carolina / Two or Three Things I Know For Sure

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Quotes from Trash

“Piece by piece, my mother is being stolen from me.” — 17 people liked it

“I did things I did not understand for reasons I could not begin to explain just to be in motion, to be trying to do something, change something in a world I wanted desperately to make over but could not imagine for myself.” — 16 people liked it

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