Episode 22: 'Being Lolita'- Author, Alisson Wood In Interview

“Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.”
Nabokov's 'Lolita'. Famous, infamous. Adored and abhorrent. Romanticised. Join us in a conversation with Alisson Wood, author of the memoir, 'Being Lolita'. This book serves as her debut work and is based on the autobiographical relationship between a seventeen-year-old Alisson and her English teacher. Idolisation, manipulation and cyclical abuse, this is a conversation about art, literature, harsh realities and a personal story.

“There is a long history of loneliness in literature. Of loneliness as a prerequisite to love. Almost like you can’t really love someone unless you’ve been alone and loveless for a long time. At least, if you’re a woman. Almost as if this protracted alone time is a purification, prepares a girl to be worthy of a man’s love. Think of the Greek myths, the Odyssey—Calypso dancing sorcery alone on her island, Penelope waiting twenty years for her wandering husband to return. Think of our fairy tales, the stories we tell our daughters before we put them into bed: of Cinderella toiling in the dust before she can be fitted for those slippers, of Rapunzel living in a tower with only her long hair as silent company. And then her prince comes to rescue her.
Nabokov said that all good stories are fairy tales. At seventeen, I was primed to be someone’s princess.”
Excerpt From: Alisson Wood. “Being Lolita”.