Monkey Bites: White Rural America

The rise of multiculturalism has elevated writers to prominence from racial and cultural groups who formerly would have had difficulty even being published in the West. Lost in the ethnic shuffle has been one of America's most invisible and voiceless minorities: poor, mostly rural whites. Variously smeared with racist epithets such as "redneck" or "white trash", the trials and tribulations of this population have not had a major writer voice their concerns since the death of novelist John Steinbeck. In his article entitled "Homo Redneckus: Redefining White Trash in American Culture", William Matthew McCarter agrees with Dorothy Allison's description of their common culture as being characterized by "men who drank and couldn't keep a job; women, invariably pregnant before marriage, who quickly became worn, fat, and old from working too many hoursà and children with runny noses, watery eyes, and the wrong attitudes" (McCarter 2005).

Dorothy Allison's short story "Monkeybites" is a reflection of the artistic credo she outlines in the preface to Trash: "sometimes it was just grief I wanted to evoke, sometimes anger,