SOURCE: “Never the Good Girl,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 1, 1995, pp. 3, 9.

In the following positive review of Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, & Literature, Tomaso commends Allison's bravery and skill at personal introspection.

Dorothy Allison loves sex. She also loves writing, women, justice, Southern landscape, literature, her family and truth. It is this huge capacity for passion that makes her work so challenging. Her raw honesty makes it so intimate it's almost too painful to read. The author of the National Book Award Finalist Bastard Out of Carolina and Trash, a collection of short stories, has written a book of essays [Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, & Literature] that are at once political, autobiographical and revolutionary. Underneath it all runs the bittersweet story of Allison's journey to wholeness, as she moves to understand and embrace all the disparate parts of herself.

“I try to live naked in the...