Dorothy Allison, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure (1996)

[tea_drinker77]

"Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that change when it comes cracks everything open" (p. 48).

Dorothy Allison is a literally lifesaving writer.  She doesn’t get a lot of attention from mainstream feminism and I doubt she ever will because she’s too lesbian, too sexual, too-working class and- too assertive about it all - ever to

Comments

[oddnumbereven]

It's funny that you posted this just now - I adore Dorothy Allison, and had been thinking about her in some context recently, which then inspired me to check her wiki, then the day after I read an Allison Anders interview http://bombsite.com/issues/48/articles/1787 & she talked about Bastard Out of Carolina, and then two days later this pops up in my flist. Thank you.

[tea_drinker77]

I'll read the interview. Dorothy Allison is one of the few writers who makes me want to read everything she's ever written.

[animaltime]

I haven't read that memoir, but I read "Bastard Out of Carolina" a few years ago. Allison's deep acceptance of herself and her convictions impressed me. Although my life has been so different from Allison's as to be unrecognizable, maybe, to her, I took the narrator of BOC as one kind of model for making a life for oneself that is honest: she recognized the injuries that had been inflicted on her as violations (moreover, as violations resulting from her position in society), and then sought out the things in life that pleased her and which she found rewarding.

Allison never made excuses for her tormentors. I was struck by the strength it took to not dismiss her own experiences and pain.

[tea_drinker77]

She's an incredibly unflinching and uncompromising writer. I admire that so much - in the book of essays (which I'd highly recommend) Skin: Talking about Sex, Class and Literature, she talks about how she believes that her best writing comes from a place of terror.

[marina_72]

Bastard Out of Carolina is one of my favourite novels. Thanks for posting this review, I shall look out for her memoir.

[tea_drinker77]

Thanks - it's well worth reading if you liked BOC because it provides a lot of the background to that novel.