{"id":40703,"date":"2026-07-20T12:27:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-20T12:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lesbianfunworld.com\/books\/?p=40703"},"modified":"2026-06-24T23:19:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T23:19:53","slug":"two-or-three-things-i-know-for-sure-by-dorothy-allison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lesbianfunworld.com\/books\/two-or-three-things-i-know-for-sure-by-dorothy-allison\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure by Dorothy Allison"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\r\n\r\nThis isn’t a traditional memoir\u2014it\u2019s more of a performance piece on the page. Dorothy Allison takes a handful of photographs from her family\u2019s history\u2014the ‘Gibson women’\u2014and uses them as anchors to tell the truth about growing up poor, white, and lesbian in Greenville, South Carolina.<\/p>

It\u2019s a brutal, necessary read. Allison doesn’t try to sanitize her family or make them ‘noble’ for the reader\u2019s comfort. She writes about the reality of the ‘bad poor’\u2014the drinking, the violence, the early pregnancies, and the cycle of abuse that destroyed so many people she loved. She\u2019s unflinching about the fact that she was raped by her stepfather and that her mother looked the other way.<\/p>

The power of the book comes from its refusal to offer a tidy ‘healing’ arc. There is no neat resolution where everything is forgiven and the trauma disappears. Instead, Allison argues that some wounds don’t close, and you don’t ‘get over’ them\u2014you just learn to carry them and use the act of telling the story to reclaim your own narrative.<\/p>

It\u2019s under a hundred pages, but it hits harder than books five times its length. It\u2019s an essential text if you\u2019re interested in how class, sexuality, and trauma collide, and how storytelling can function as a survival strategy rather than just a hobby.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n\r\n

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