Assotto Saint, Nuclear Lovers

Staff Pick of the Week

My first pick as a staff member at UWM’s Special Collections is The Women Who Hate Me by Dorothy Allison (b. 1949), published by Long Haul Press in Brooklyn, 1983. This small, intimate book of poetry also features illustrations by Laurie McLaughlin.

Born in Greenville, South Carolina to a fifteen-year-old unwed mother, Allison grew up in a very poor, working-class family in the 1950s. Her burgeoning lesbian identity and strained/abusive relationship with her stepfather left her feeling ostracized and out of place. After attending Florida Presbyterian college and the New School of Social Research for anthropology, she found solace in a community of other feminists and eventually made a career for herself developing stories and poems often based on her experiences. She would receive mainstream recognition at the publishing at her 1992 novel, Bastard Out of Carolina.

What cannot be overlooked in Allison’s writing is her honesty and ability to lay everything bare; to articulate what is seen but never said, as gut-wrenching and brutal as it may be. With themes of sexual abuse, child abuse, class struggle, women, feminism, lesbianism, and family throughout, she dedicates this collection of poetry to “the women who hate me who made me angry enough to write these poems,” and “for the women who love me who read the poems and helped me pull all the pieces together.”

- Grant, Special Collections Undergraduate Intern 

my other grounding technique is remembering that the earliest abolitionists & the earliest suffragists had no proof that the world would ever make possible what they fought for and indeed many of them did not live to see it come to pass. and yet they did not succumb to despair so it would be disrespectful to their memory to let it overtake me

who is this and why did he hurt me

Amazing how they are all repulsive in their own unique way like Batman villains.

Robert Aramayo as Elrond has been fantastic this whole time but he was extraordinarily good tonight playing such desperation and courage and I just wanna say it’s going to be devastatingly painful to watch his Elrond beg Maxim Baldry’s Isildur to destroy the ring for him to not . Esp as we’ve now spent such time with them both. Like I know it’s gonna kill me dead if they go with the movie lore there

emma forrest deconstructing and destroying damon (excerpts from nylon magazine, 1998)

The Babushkas Of Chernobyl Dir. Anne Bogart, Holly Morris