Bastard Out Of Carolina Book Quotes

The worst thing in the world was the way I felt when I wanted us to be like the families in the books in the library, when I just wanted Daddy Glen to love me like the father in Robinson Crusoe. (209)

Books can offer a counter narrative—another story to the one we think we know.

What I loved were books that heightened the sense of life’s wonders without denying the complexity and horror that sometimes accompanied those wonders.

Books can offer a counter narrative—another story to the one we think we know. Story is told in a voice. The voice of Bastard Out of Carolina is that of a young girl who has just lost her mother and her sense of any real hope or justice. You don’t know who she is until the story ends, and I always intended for the ending to make the reader angry.

Dorothy Allison’s Bastard Out of Carolina is a coming-of-age novel about Ruth Ann (Bone) Boatwright and a difficult childhood made even harder by her violent and predatory stepfather.