Distance in Lahari's Interpreter of Maladies

In Interpreter of Maladies, there were nine short stories that were approximately 23 pages each. The theme of the stories seemed driven by distances. Some deal with the distance between lovers or families. Some deal with distance between ideas. Others deal with physical distance. In the stories “A Temporary Matter”,” Interpreter of Maladies,” and “This Blessed House,” we see distance in marriages. “The Treatment of Bibi Haldar,” “When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine,” “The Third and final Continent,” and “Mrs. Sen’s” focus on physical distance. The two stories “Sexy” and “The Real Duran” do not link with the rest of the stories.
In “A Temporary Matter,” the man and wife lost their child and since then were unable to see each other without remembering their loss. The husband attempts to rekindle the passion in their relationship by turning out all the lights and revealing all of their secrets. The wife tells the husband near the end of the story that she had found an apartment and was going to move out. The husband reveals that he had held the deceased infant and knew the sex.
In “Interpreter of Maladies,” the tour guide and driver looks at this couple he has in his car that seems incompatible. The couple has three children, two boys and a girl. The mother appears to be detached from them. He dreams of having a secret affair with the wife but finds out when the child is surrounded by monkeys and the parents join together to save him that their relationship may seem strange but it works for them.
The story “This Blessed House,” is about a couple moving in to a new home. The wife discovers many “Christian paraphernalia” in the house. The wife loves them and wants to display them all over the house. However they are Christians and the husband is concerned about what the neighbors and people from his job will think. He wants to destroy it all but for some reason he doesn’t. his wife delights in finding these things all over the house.
“The Treatment of Bibi Haladar” speaks of a female that has an extreme case of epilepsy. The doctor diagnoses sexual interaction as a cure for illness. The epilepsy interferes with her everyday life and because she could never function very long her parents failed to show her the rituals that all women were supposed to be able to follow by as a wife. When people realized that she was incapable of doing these things no one wanted to marry her. When her brother’s wife becomes pregnant they move Bibi to another part of the house which shuts her off from everybody because they fear that her illness will bring harm to the child. The child is born healthy but falls ill one day after Bibi is moved back down to the main part of the house. Bibi is sent back to her area above the house and when the family moves away she refuses to come down. They discover that she was pregnant. Bibi was distanced from the family as well as from others because of her disease.
In Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, Mr. Pirazada visits a family’s home before and during Halloween. He is distanced from his family who are in a war zone. He becomes attached to the family’s little girl because she is much like his daughter’s.
In “The Third and Final continent,” the elderly lady who allows the young man to live n her home is distanced from the world. In that everything has changed so since when she was young because she is 103 years old and has dementia.
In the story “Mrs. Sen’s,” Mrs. Sen is distanced from her sister, her birth home, and her husband who works a lot. She has to learn how to drive so that she can get around. She babysits a young boy and they form a strong bond. He is distanced from his mother.
The story “Sexy” has two main characters the female who is going with the married man and a child that seems whose father is cheating on his mother. There should be a distance between the boy’s mother and father in the story and the man who is having an affair and his wife; but there isn’t. The wife is “beautiful”. Yet the females that the men are cheating with are “sexy”. Therefore its more about sexual freedom or desire rather than filling some void that the marriage isn’t fulfilling anymore.
The story “The Real Duran” focuses on good luck charms and witch craft. The woman is distant from her home but this isn’t the primary focus, even though she is shunned when they find out that she can’t ward off anything.

Trethewey's Mark

I have never really been a fan of poetry. I tried writing poetry and only focused on rhyming so it never really had much meaning. Natasha Trethewey, on the other hand, has changed my view somewhat. The first poem in Native Guard that actually got my attention was "Graveyard Blues." It was actually a poem that I could relate to because I remember being in a similar situation. The poem describes the process of her mother being buried. My uncle's burial was almost like Trethewey's mom's. It reminded me of what Trethewey said at the Fall Poetry and Fiction Festival about people trying to figure out which parts of her life are a part of her work. It is obvious that this poem was a dark time in her life. Her writing contradicts the statement she made at the festival because if she didn't want people to wonder, why write it and publish it? Another poem I found interesting was "What The Body Can Say" because it raised an interesting connection between the body and spirit which is linked by the soul. I enjoyed Trethewey's creativity when reading the references made to God and communion throughout the poem. Overall, I actually enjoyed reading Trethewey's poetry and I'm not a poetry lover.

Men as Boys in Bastard Out of Carolina

In the southern culture presented in Bastard Out of Carolina, the women are raised to believe that men should be treated with the forgiveness and extra care as little boys. It is evident that Bone's mother gives Daddy Glen multiple chances to prove his love to her. After Anne finds out about the injuries Bone had, she still can't resist the boy in Glen. Granny notices the inconsistencies of Glen on their first encounter, "That boy's got something wrong with him" (37). We find that Daddy Glen does have a problem. He is an apologetic, pedophilic boy. Glen has not been able to accept the fact that he is not suitable for a family. He cannot keep a job and his immediate family has already rejected him. His wife won't be able to give him a son to redeem himself before his father and that drives Daddy Glen crazy. He is the only boy in this ready-made family and he is acting out against Bone for not accepting him. Daddy Glen shows his power by molesting Bone and not giving her a chance to accept him. Hurting her does not bother him because he feels like he has control at those moments.

Trethewey's Language

I have to start off by saying that I was not really impressed with Natasha Trethewey. I read poetry for the way that words run together and sound beautiful. I think it is very possible to use everyday words to create lyrical poetry, and while Trethewey uses simple language, her poetry doesn't feel natural when it's read. To me, the language feels choppy and forced, as if she were forcing herself to use colloquial words when she would normally use a more elevated vocabulary.

I really only enjoyed a few poems from the first section of the book. My favorite poem overall is "After Your Death." This was the only poem that seems to have real emotion behind it, and the language flows really well and is actually very pretty. Phrases like "I twisted a ripe fig loose from its stem" and "I'm too late, again, another space emptied by loss" exemplify simplicity in language but are still poignant and meaningful. Trethewey proves that she does know how to write beautiful words (she did win the Pulitzer, after all) and create true emotion through those words.

High-school Poetry

As a poetry fan, I find Natasha Tretheway's Native Guard to be a refreshing look into history and the injustices endured by African Americans. Tretheway not only explores her African American past through many of her poems, but she also shares her personal story of growing up mulatto and losing her mother to domestic violence as a child. Native Guard demonstrates Tretheway's struggle to find her true identity in a world that forgets its African American history and without a mother to tell her of her family history. Tretheway's poetry collection is the voice of identity struggle further undermined by a deep grief. Her particular struggle is deeper and more complex than most identity crisis'; however, the search for identity is something that can be related to by every individual.
Tretheway's style of writing is simple and easy to understand. I find it easy to read, which makes it easy to relate to. The poetry has a flow that is easy to read that adds to it's function. This collection would be a wonderful collection to read in a high-school poetry section. The subject matter isn't too complex, the text isn't too lengthy, it's based on topics that are relevant to today's youth, and teens of all ages could relate to it in their search for identity I thoroughly enjoyed reading Tretheway's Native Guard, it was both educational and entertaining.

We are in Control of how we Absorb History

Trethewey’s Native Guard poems shows the differences between a candid look at the history of the south, Trethewey's personal experiences in that environment and her feelings toward her mother. Trethewey’s poems in the text are each in some way references to one another. In the poem "Native Guard", the speaker takes a journal from the house of an imprisoned confederate and uses it to record his thoughts. The speaker writes over the previous owner's words and the cross-stitched look of the journal shows an embrace of both the past and the present. That we are all bound to something in the past while we build toward the future. How much control we have over history and how much history has control over us.

Trethewey talks about her own personal history in her poems. The first section of the book deals almost entirely with the death of her mother and how that affected her throughout her life. Poems like "What is Evidence" and "Photograph: Ice Storm, 1971" Trethewey describes how her mother was physically abused and how it affected her. In the poem, "What is Evidence" Trethewey further explores the abuse her mother suffered. This is most clear in the lines "Only the landscape of her body - splintered clavicle, pierced temporal - her thin bones settling a bit each day, the way all things do." She is referring to her mother's buried body, showing all of the scars of abuse from when she was alive. In this way her mother is just like the members of the Native Guard buried on Ship Island. This book teaches that we are in control of how we absorb history, and that we are not a result of past events but the result of the way we interpret those events.

Analyzing Tretheway’s Native Guard Without Biographical Interpretations

Can we really look at text without trying to analyze how much of it came from the writer’s life? Well let’s try. During the poetry festival, Natasha Tretheway stated that she really disliked it when people tried to figure out how much of her writing came from experiences that occurred throughout her life. No one likes anyone probing into the sad parts or darker parts of their lives; however those parts of our lives drive our emotions in our writing and allows us to be viewed as human. Our goal when we write is to make an experience seem real. Thus, if we achieve that people are going to assume that we are writing about an actual occurrence. Therefore, let’s remove these thoughts from our mind for a moment and just analyze Tretheway’s poetry without biographical knowledge and interpretation of her life. Does this take away or add anything to the poem?

For the sake of brevity, i will only analyze the poems "Myth." Tretheway writes all of the poems of this book in first person. in the poem myth she used the word "Erebus." Erebus is a reference from Greek mythology which refers to a deity and a place. The diety was the son of Kaos and darkness and the brother of Nyx (night).the place is the underworld. Tretheway uses Erebus as an underworld which is used as metaphor for her memories and dreams.

Throughout the poem, there is a lot of repetition of phrases. We see this in the lines "I was asleep while you were dying, it was as if you slipped through some rift, a hollow, i make between my slumber and my waking, sleep heavy turning." If you look closely, you will notice that the poem has sort of a ballad rhythm. Its almost like a pendulum swinging back and forth. The first repeated phrase "I was asleep while you were dying" has a change in tone and meaning as it is repeated on the last line. First, it appears that the author is stating what happened, and in the last line, the phrase seems to saying that he/she missed the last moment that the person was alive. The phrase "sleep heavy turning" is repeated. However at one point, its not the persona who is sleep but the deceased. The narrator was in a deep sleep while the person was dying however in the next mention of the phrase it describes the deceased in eternal sleep. the deep sleep that the narrator speaks of is him or her not seeing the small hints given that signified that the deceased was going to die. The entire poem switches around phrases which adds to the pendulum effect. The pendulum effect demonstrates how the person went away every time the narrator awoke.

The rhyme in this poem is abcabc, the middle two stanzas end the lines with the words "turning", "follow", and "forsaking". The last stanzas imitate the same rhyme scheme as the first two stanzas. The stanzas are written in tercets.

To answer the question: If you remove the biographical interpretations away from the poem does the poem maintain the same effect? The answer is yes. When people ask questions about the author's life, sometimes its because they are looking for someone that has been through the same thing as themselves, or they are simply curious about the mystery of converting difficult emotions and occurrences into words.

The Power of Hearing

This past Friday night, I had the pleasure of hearing Dorothy Allison and Natasha Trethewey read from their respective works. Since the Dorothy Allison post is past due however, it will suffice to say that she put on an entertaining show. Natasha Trethewey, though decidedly less energetic in her reading, was equally impressive. It’s hard to put into words the feeling you get hearing a Pulitzer Prize winning author read her works live, the way they were meant to be heard, before a small crowd of like-minded dorks and literature enthusiasts, but that said, I shall try. Reading from her book of poetry, Native Guard, Trethewey prefaced most poems before reading, setting the scene and mood of each piece.
In “The Southern Crescent” Trethewey deals with feelings of maturation and memory, of plans failed and set again. The scene is on board a now defunct train line and gives a nostalgic feel that is at once sad and hopeful. Though she is burdened with the memories of past trips “gone wrong”, there is still something that “awaits” her, “the rails humming like anticipation.” The mere reading of this poem is great, but having the author read it allows further insight. I particularly liked hearing her thoughts on seeing her mother’s face in the train window, the author’s own face actually, that nevertheless bears the stamp of her mother.
Trethewey’s reading of “Genus Narcissus” is another example of how a poem can be elucidated in a way the text simply cannot achieve. Trethewey spoke of researching in her work to help themes develop. Sure, the reference to Narcissus seems a fairly apparent parallel to the child’s self interest in the work, and the fact that the poem is titled as it is hints that daffodils are probably termed in Latin as genus narcissus, but I did not know that beforehand. And apparently, neither did Trethewey. I just find it immensely interesting to hear how works progress and come about, and attending these types of readings can afford one such an opportunity. Thank you, Pee Dee Fiction Festival, thank you.

Refusal to be a Parent

The thing that really struck a nerve with me in Bastard out of Carolina by Dorothy Allision is how Anney refused to be a parent. She neglected and decided to choose a man over her child. As a future parent, I do not understand why she allows a man to tear her family apart. If I was Anney, I would’ve killed Daddy Glen and never thought twice about it. (This sounds very harsh, but I do not believe a woman should ever forgive a man, especially her husband, for sexually abusing her child). In actuality, before Anney met Daddy Glen, she was doing very well for herself. She was working and providing her children with the necessities in life. After she met and married Daddy Glen, everything went “downhill”. The interesting thing about the situation is that Daddy Glen never physically abuses Anney. Throughout the story, Daddy Glen posses many traits that an abuser might exhibit; for instance, many abusers try to abandon their partners away from their family. This is the first thing that Daddy Glen does when he marries Anney; he moves her away from her family. Also, I think this decision to move Anney and her children away from their family allows him more access to abuse Bone. If they would’ve stayed closer to Anney’s family, I truly doubt he would have abused Bone, as much. The second thing that Daddy Glen does that is relatable to an abusive person is his constant mood swings. Throughout the story, Daddy Glen has everyone afraid of his rage. Usually, an abusive person is aggressive, than his/her attitude turns into apologetic. Whenever Daddy Glen beats Bone, he then turns around and says he didn’t mean to do it; this is an example of his constant shifts in mood swings. Another thing that Daddy Glen does is manipulation. Daddy Glen is very good with this throughout the story. He manipulates Anney, but making her thinks that she needs to treat him like a man. Every time Daddy Glen loses a job, he makes it seem like it was not his fault that he got fired and Anney lets the situation slide. Whenever Daddy Glen kept losing his job, this should’ve been a sign to Anney that she did not need a man that could not support her family. Wasn’t that the reason, she married him in the first place? As I think about it, Anney really didn’t have any reasons to remain married to Daddy Glenn. He mistreated her family, did not support them, and constantly had excuses for his actions. To sum it up, I guess Anney stayed with Daddy Glenn because she did not have any self-respect for herself. She was needful and wanted someone who she thought was going to be a good person. In truth, he was the worst person she could’ve met.

Mishapen Identity

In Bastard out of Carolina, Bone's identity and sense of self are completely negatively shaped by how others see her. She is immediately categorized with the reputation of her uncles because of her dark hair. Kids in town tease her for having dark hair and eyes, claiming that she is part African-American. Bone is an outcast from birth when she's labeled "illegitamate." She associates herself more with her boy cousins and uncles than with the females in her family. She is labeled a liar and a theif due to her family's reputation; in turn becoming a liar and a theif. She has a low self-esteem and never quite fits in anywhere due to all the harrassment she endures about her dark features. Her own family even outcasts her, attributing her features to either the Cherokee in her (the strong, angry, and silent side); or to her "no good" father. All the negativity makes Bone develop a negative self image, one that allowes her to relate to the anger, violence, frustration, and lonliness inside herself more than the love.
By watching the females in her family, Bone doesn't learn much other than how to tolerate an alcoholic husband. She does learn a lot about life, bad experiences, coping, and hard work from her Aunt Reylene. Most of Bone's advice and learning comes from her Uncle Earl and cousins. She relates more to their strength and the respect through fear that they command. Bone learns to be tough, mean, and hardened by watching her uncles and cousins. She admires the power they hold through the fear they strike in others. Bone learns to deal with pain by inflicting it on others.
With little to no guidance from the women in her family and a group of men from the wrong side of the tracks being the only mentors, it's no wonder Bone gets trapped inside herself in a search for her identity. Bone is not only confused with who she is as a person, she is also surrounded with complete chaos and abuse that leaves her distant, cold, and introverted. When nothing outside your own mind makes sense and you cannot find anyone or anything in which to identify, inside yourself becomes the safest place to be.

Inner Strength

I’m not a mother. I have no wish to be a mother, and certainly little to no maternal instinct. The best I can drum up when it comes to maternal instinct is dealing with drunken friends, and my two small nieces. I know nothing about feeling a child growing within yourself, bringing that child into the world, or raising that child and forming their moral attitudes and personal beliefs. Now with that disclaimer aside I am a daughter, and sometimes a very troubling one. My mother never had to deal with me whining for clothes or makeup privileges, and she certainly never listened to me beg for a pony. Instead my mother had to deal with me raising hell with the boys in the neighborhood, cursing out my Girl Scout’s troop leader, and being overly independent even at a risk to my own health. Despite all the lectures, and all the stress, my mother loved me, and every time I did something good she would point out how much of herself she saw in me. Bone and Anney have a somewhat different problem. My mother saw herself as a contributor to my laudable character aspects, but Anney sees within Bone the person she wants to be instead of the person she is or was. Bone is a strong character, and strong in a way Anney can almost never hope to achieve or reproduce. Bone is strong internally, and in the end she proves unbreakable. There’s little question that Anney’s character is weak in many ways. She fails at the primary task of motherhood, protecting your child, and she fails at being able to stand as an independent and self-owned person. Bone seems to lack that problem from birth. She is constantly redefining herself, and she learns from those around her what kind of person she wants to be. She allows others to give her input, but her ultimate decision is her own. With or without Daddy Glenn’s actions Bone is a force unto herself, and Anney can only long for that kind of strength, and feel shame that it is her daughter that possesses it and not herself. Bastard out of Carolina paints a vivid portrait of Bone’s struggle to become the kind of person she would want to call a friend. It is this struggle that makes Bone such a wonderful character, and it is this struggle that makes for a story. We may never know where Bone’s strength came from, but we got to her see her develop and refine it, and that made a fine story indeed.

Importance of illegitimacy, seld concept, and class struggle in Bastard Out of Carolina

In Bastard out of Carolina, there are four things that I've noticed as the reasons for Bone's interpretation of self and assumptions of what people think about her. In the story, we know that the rape played a large role in the development of Bone's character. Daddy Glen used his abusive ways to make Bone feel as if she was wrong, due to his own doubt of his own self worth, which was the result of his fathers's mistreatment. We notice before the rape, just in the matter of Bone's conception and her father leaving, that the mother's drive to have Bastard removed from Bone's birth certificate was to omit the chance of being judged and treated as something of scorn. Bone's mother fights the negative label that her child is given due to actions of her mother and father. However, ironically the actions of Bone's mother continue to add to Bone's negative self concept. Her marriage of Daddy Glen, her knowing that Bone was being brutally beaten, her witnessing her daughter's rape and feeling sorry for Daddy Glen display of need and her leaving her raped child to be with the raper all contribute to Bone's view of her self as "white trash" and a "bastard."

Her grandmother says that Bone isn't too pretty and the tries to tell her that she resembles her grandfather. The entire time she is feeling sorry for herself because her mom is light haired with soft features where as her hair is dark and she has strong features. Through out the whole story, she is questioning who she looks like and pitying herself for being different until the Pearls come along who have everything she desires except for they are grotesque creatures as far as appearance. She finds someone that harbors the same hatred as she has as far as looking differently and people judging her. They have an emotional tie yet, she also realizes or notices what that amount of hatred does to a person eventually.

The descriptions of her family past time activities, lack of religion, and criminal records also adds to Bone's labeling of her family as "white trash." When she is forced to return and pay for the candy she stole and ate, she feels that the man is looking down upon her removing "her kind" from his store.

Even her nickname, Bone, causes a blow to her self concept. When we think of the word "bone", we think of something that can be broken however when it heal becomes strong. A bone is tender in some ways but hardens when fragmented. Another connotation of the word "bone" is a quick sexual interaction therefore hinting to her illegitimate birth.

The story mentions hunger which can be taken metaphorically as a desire to belong and be cherished as something of worth. She reads a lot and becomes religious in order to reject her family's ways as well as place herself in a world that is different from her own and she has a choice of who she is.

Bastard...

In Bastard Out of Carloina we see another fine example of a protagonist who gives readers ample opportunity to feel sorry for her. Bone like Lil Bit and Didion are victims of tragic circumstances beyond their control. This seems to be a recurring theme within these award winning texts authored by women. So again the question is begged is this a story of a victim or a survivor. Obviously, Bone is a victim on several levels. She is a bastard child, state-certified. This archaic designation is a permanent brand given to her by the state of South Carolina; a permanent reminder of her inherent inferiority. She lives in increasingly impoverished circumstances. She is cold, hungry and rootless. She is finally the victim of verbal, physical and sexual abuse.

As the narrative progresses we forget that Bone is a bastard. We forget about this victimization; it losses it's power within Bone's narrative. The aspect of poverty is also forgotten. Bone and the rest of her family are poor, poor beyond what most will ever be able to comprehend in this age of subsidized housing, medicine and large charity organizations. This oppressive poverty also falls by wayside by the end of the narrative. Only the abuse is left victimize Bone, but she is not dead at the end of the book and we must assume that her narrative will continue beyond the last page. It seems only logical that the abuse she has endured will also fail to define Bone.

Identity Crisis

"Being pregnant was proof that some man thought you were pretty sometime, and the more babies she got, the more she knew she was worth something" (Allison 230-31).
Anney expresses her disgust when her aunt makes this statement. But in actuality, she was trying to attain some sense of self worth, in some way or another.

In Bastard out of Carolina , Anney's search of self-fulfillment takes her on a twelve-year journey trying to find social acceptance. The purpose of this journey is to try, in a sense, to shield Bone from future hurt and pain caused by the stigma that is attached to the word "bastarg", but she neglects to see it in the present. Anney's persistance in attempting to remove the word from Bone's birth certificate, in my opinion, is a result of her own selfishness. Although, it generally means a child that it born out of wedlock, the word "bastard" reflects more on the mother than it does the child. Therefore, I feel that Bone being referred to as "bastard" is more of a reflection on Anney than her. During that time, girls/women (who engaged in premarital sex and had a child out of wedlock, especially at an an early age) was considered to be, as my grandmother would say, "fast" or "hot in the pants". The boys/men of course stood blameless. I have heard many stories about girls in those days being "sent up the road" when they became pregnant because of the shame and embarrassment. The poor child usually ends up being referred to as their "brother" or "sister". I think Anney felt as if this was how the world was going to perceive her.

I do not question Anney's love for Bone, but her neglect in trying to teach Bone (which Raylene attempts to do) that other's do not define your identity. In her attempt to "make everything right"(ie. correcting the birth certificate, marrying Glen) Anney has introduced Bone to far more hurt than she could have possibly ever known.

Sexual Abuse

In the novel, Bastard out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison explores the cycle of abuse and demonstrates how abused children grow up with self-hatred and anger, and become the source of abuse themselves. From almost the beginning of his relationship with Anney, Glen abuses Bone. His first sexual abuse of her takes place shortly after he marries her mother. At first, Anney knows that Glen is physically beating Bone. She hears, through the closed bathroom door, his first brutal attack on her. She cleans up Bone after this and subsequent beatings, all the while adamantly denying what her husband is doing. Bone’s mom may have left Glen for a while, but she always went back to him. It made me sick – and it is hard for me to understand how anyone can make the choices this particular mother makes. The biggest question I have about this book is why did none of Bone’s family ever come out and help Bone? Even after her mom knew what Glen was doing to Bone, her mother ignored the fact that her daughter was being beaten and raped. Why it is that her mom insists on putting the blame on Bone. Bone’s mother could be worried about the fact of being alone again. Glen sucks up to Anney so much to the fact that she is too blind to see what is really happening to her daughter. The story itself made me furious – which may have been Allison’s goal.

Sex Addiction

In the story Bastard Out of Carolina, the main character Bone is sexualized at a very young age. She has a great deal of knowledge about sex and masturbates often to masochistic thoughts. After doing some research on sexual addiction, I found that sex addicts are often sexually abused as children. One description of a sexually abused child fit Bone’s situation well. “The child may have grown up in a hostile, chaotic or neglectful home, or the family may have been very normal but the child grows up emotionally starved for love because affection is rarely expressed” (Ewald). Bone starts the book as a happy child, but when her mother marries Glen and begins to abuse her, she isolates herself and expresses anger toward her family. She is desperate for the affection of her mother, however with Glen in the picture, she cannot receive the love she needs and desires. For abused children, sex becomes a comfort to them in many different situations. For Bone, masturbation becomes an escape from her family situation, a method to fall asleep at night, and possibly a way to make her feelings of guilt more tangible. If the story were extended into Bone’s adulthood, could she become a sex addict, an abuser herself, or possibly partake in an abusive relationship with a man? Many critics believe that Bone is a lesbian in the story, but the abuse she suffers at the hands of her step father would obviously make her wary of men. If Dorothy Allison were not practicing an openly gay lifestyle, would the topic of Bone being a lesbian even be explored?

http://allpsych.com/journal/sexaddiction.html