Tannins2 - Untitled

SITTM Dominique Burnside

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 

Angela Lane (British, 1974) - Phantom Light (2024)

Every character who's encountered Sauron in disguise thus far: *is deceived by his fair/scruffy/pathetic/drowned cat/delete as appropriate guise*

Durin, after spending a few minutes in 'Annatar's' presence:

I actually think it would be more weird and cold blooded and psychopathic to just draw straws and hunt someone with no attempt to create distance and meaning like the elaborate ritualizing of it all is sooo understandable to me, and underscores the pivotal importance of Shauna as butcher and nonbeliever and uh the most ice cold of ‘em all.

Thinking about all of Amy’s ballet slippers and how much her feet must have hurt all the time

Contemplation

Mototaki, Akita, Japon

Takeshi Shikama

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