You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Michael Sulfurblad, and welcome to Bookworm.

Today, I've got two guests.

They are Greg Saris and Dorothy Allison.

This is part of a series entitled Imaging the Us, an exploration of autobiographical writings,

which is a collaboration between

Bookworm and the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities. This collaboration

looks at the relationship between autobiographical writings, memory, and the articulation

of an us. Dorothy Allison is the author of the novel, Bastard out of Carolina, as well as

collections of poetry, stories, and essays. The Women Who Hate Me, Poetry, Skin, Essays, and Trash, which is a book of short stories.

Greg Saris is the author of an interconnected novel in stories called Grand Avenue.

He is the author as well of the life of the Indian medicine woman and basket maker, Mabel McKay, called Mabel McKay,

Weaving the Dream.

He has put together a critical text called Keeping Slug Woman Alive, a holistic approach to American

Indian texts, as well as an anthology of Native American, California, Native American writing

called the Sound of Rattles and Clappers. I wanted to begin this by asking you what comes to

mind when you hear the word grandmother?

Well, I think I'd said that grandmother to me is what other people have. I didn't have a

grandmother. I had a granny. Sometimes what she was called grandma, but mostly granny. And that

...