Two or Three Things I Know For Sure by Dorothy Allison (Post 2)

Dorothy Allison describes her life and the things she has been through not to get pity or respect, even, but instead to help others understand what it took her to change her life. She was born and raised in a place that not too many people got away from. It seemed as though her family had a written history that only kept repeating itself, until she was old enough to realize she wasn't going to sit down and take that just like everyone else did. Through her childhood abuse Allison felt as though she was unworthy of anything more than what she was getting, but luckily she gained the courage to stand up for herself on her sixteenth birthday when she openly admitted to her step father who had been molesting her and abusing her for years, that she would no longer take it and no longer allow him to touch her. This was the first step in her healing process.

As we discussed in class I think it was important for Allison to write about her life and her troubles in order to put them in the past and move on. Writing is a very well known form of healing and it allows a person to take their issues and no longer keep them imprisoned within themselves. By letting the general public read about her life she is allowing those issues to become public, and not private and held within herself. Now it is the reader's problem, it is their job to sort out the difficulties and understand the mentalities of her writing. She is freed from the grasp of her untold secrets. She talks about her sexuality also, as not being a product of her abuse, but instead being who she is. And I think it takes a lot of courage to discuss something that would probably be on the minds of many people while reading her story. By expressing her emotions and her appeals and imperfections she allows the reader to step back and take a look at their own life and discover things about themselves that they may have, not only been keeping from others, but also keeping from themselves. Her story was self-discovery, and by doing so she was able to release some of the built up issues she kept within herself for so many years.