Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature

Summary

A collection of critical essays from award-winning author Dorothy Allison about identity, gender politics, and queer theory, now with a new preface

Author Dorothy Allison is known for her bold and insightful writing on issues of class and sexuality. In Skin, she approaches these topics through twenth-three impassioned essays that explore her identity—from her childhood in a poor family in South Carolina to her adult life as a lesbian in the suburbs of New York—and her sexuality.

In “Gun Crazy,” Allison delves into what guns meant to the men and women around her when she was growing up. She gives insight into the importance of speaking professionally about sexuality in “Talking to Straight People” and articulates the danger women feel about revealing their personal desires, even within feminist communities, in “Public Silence, Private Terror.”

Allison is fearless in her discussion of many social and political taboos. Compelling and raw, Skin is an honest and intimate work.