From an interview with author Dorothy Allison on lithub.com:
When you started writing, did your family know?
My mother did. She adored country western and gospel music. That can lead to a lot of really bad poetry in an adolescent girl. But every time I’d write a poem, she collected it. That helps a lot when you’re a little baby writer, having someone who adores everything that you utter or write.
You’ve been a guest professor at several colleges and universities . What’s the biggest obstacle you try to help students overcome?
They’ve been conditioned—especially young Southern writers—to write in a voice that is not their own. I try to get them to take a breath and let that go. By that I mean you have to allow yourself to use a voice that is unique and your own, that is not what you’ve read before. There is a certain impulse in all writers to want to please. You have to give up wanting to please.
Do you ever feel completely comfortable and accepted, or do you always feel a little different?
Both things are true. I always say I’m a visitor from another planet! I take a certain joy and power out of being that survivor growing up poor, that embattled female, that lesbian feminist, that Southern accent. It’s a kind of reverse authority. The resistance to contempt really is very powerful.
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