Allison Glock is an author, screenwriter, director, and journalist. She is currently an Executive Producer for NBC's The Blacklist. Her most recent award is a Television Academy Honor this year for her EP work on 37 Words, a documentary series that anchored the women's initiative Fifty/50 she creative-directed for Disney.
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Beauty Before ComfortThe Story of an American Original
Aneita Jean never liked the men at the Klan rallies. It scared her not to see their faces. It made her uncomfortable that they all seemed to know her daddy, and that he knew them by their raspy voices. She would watch them circling around on the hill, their crosses aflame, and snuggle closer to her father’s chest.
“I want to leave, daddy,” she’d say softly, fearful they might overhear and come running back, robes flapping behind like hateful phantoms.
“Hush up, Jeannie.”
Beauty Before Comfort:The Story of an American Original -
Beauty Before ComfortThe Story of an American Original
She awoke to the sound of the door creaking open. She could tell from the backlit outline that it was not the baby’s mother who was coming in, but a boy. She said nothing, pressed her eyes shut, and pretended she was still asleep. When the boy climbed on top of her, she knew who it was. Silently, she slid the baby to the far corner of the blanket, until only her fingertips were touching the baby’s chubby thigh. Then she lay absolutely still while George Kelly ran his shaky hands over her belly and under her dress.
Beauty Before Comfort:The Story of an American Original -
Beauty Before ComfortThe Story of an American Original
When you work at the pottery or the mill or the mine, you come to understand certain truths. Hands are lopped off. Bones are broken. Machines grind men up. Mines collapse. Lungs clog. Men drink. Women gossip. You are born knowing that most people get lost, that their stories die with them. You expect little else. And so you talk a lot about nothing and you get shit-faced and you welcome violence if for no other reason than because you can ignite it.
Beauty Before Comfort:The Story of an American Original
“Beauty Before Comfort is as apt a title as you could find for a memoir that is tart and poetic. Allison Glock has the kind of writing talent that packs worlds into sentences. It’s a small book but it takes in all of American small town life and all of the American Dream. With a few deft strokes Ms. Glock summons up some wonderful characters from her family history, all circling around the grandmother, Aneita Jean Blair. You won’t forget this woman and you’ll remember forever the writer’s magical skills. What a storyteller! What a book! Get a cup of tea. Put out the cat. Settle down and you’ll finish the book in one session.” — Frank McCourt
“Allison Glock makes it look easy. Her memoir of her sexy, spirited grandmother (a sort of Appalachian Emma Bovary, but with a sense of humor) is a perfectly told and perfectly written American story. I can’t remember the last time I met a woman in print who became as real to me as young Aneita Jean Blair–a girl so heartbreaking, so wild, so vividly rendered into flesh that you can almost feel yourself inside her body, sashaying down her Depression-era factory-town street in her tightest dress, turning every man’s head while yearning so desperately to be transported into some glamorous other world. An unforgettable portrait.” —Elizabeth Gilbert [on Beauty Before Comfort]
“Allison Glock introduces us to a real American beauty and a true original, her grandmother, Aneita Jean Blair, whose spirit was as raw and real as the rugged West Virginia mountains that bore her. Told with clarity and wit and wry humor, this is a real peek behind the tin roofed shacks, the toothless grins, the yawning pickup trucks, the world of the so called hillbillies, where we meet men and women of pride, of resounding humor and grit, who were more aware of life’s ironies and the tight spaces they lived in than any outsider could imagine. Allison Glock skillfully takes us to places we’ve never been before and may never see again. I tip my cap to her.” —James McBride [on Beauty Before Comfort]
Selected Works
