Dorothy Allison's Trash

Dorothy Allison’s Trash:Stories
Begin: 11/06/07
End: 11/08/07
Quality: Six out of Ten.
Reason: Unread.
Genre: Fiction. Short Stories. Southern Literature.
Original Language: English.
Date of Publication: 1988.
Fog Index: 7.4/87% are harder.
Flesch Index: 76.5/92% are harder.
Flesch-Kincaid Index: 5.9/86% are harder.
Complex Words: 5%/91% are harder.
Number: First
Synopsis: This is a collection of short stories by Dorothy Allison which span from stories of growing up in the south to her relationships with various lovers.
Thoughts: The first story of this collection, “River of Names”, was so horrifyingly depressing, so morbid and morose, that it even made me uncomfortable and that is a feat, ladies and gentlemen, that not many people can accomplish. Let’s not forget how much time I spend reading Toni Morrison. Something about the constant litany of cousins who had been beaten, killed, raped, ect just overwhelmed me a little bit.

I ended up really enjoying the work. I always have a hard time with short stories. I am just not that into them. This was easier since they all seemed to be connected by the same and/or similar narrator. The stories that I especially liked were “A lesbian appetite”, “Muscles of the Mind” and “Don’t tell me you don’t know”.

The first portion of the stories are mainly about growing up, Allison then seems to mainly concentrate of being a young lesbian. I did like the lesbian stories quite a bit. I really started to like the stories with “Don’t tell me you don’t know.”



“The problem is…”I told them, checking first to be sure the door was locked. “The proble is that I don’t love her. I want to love her. I want to love somebody. I want to go crazy with love, eat myself up with love. Starve myself, strangle and die with love, like everybody else. Like the rest of the whole goddamned world. I want to be like the rest of the world.” (90)