Allison’s Story And Why She Tells It

“I did begin, and start another one. When we were small, I could catch my sisters the way they caught butterflies, capture their attention and almost make them believe that all I said was true.” "Let me tell you a story" is her constant refrain that undoubtedly grabs attention. She is the mastermind of her stories and she weaves it the way she wants it. These stories evolve around her family history, her mother, aunts, sisters and cousins, women who lived in Greenville, South Carolina, the great grubby, the poor, and the grassroots. These were women who have been trapped by hard compromise, ground down until they no longer knew who they were, yet who survive and endure worth all their own. Allison's own story is here, too vivid, painful, and brutally honest. She told us about the women who ran away, all those legendary women who ran away. Was she one of those women? Maybe, but one thing she knows is that no one told her to take her world with her when running and that running eventually becomes a habit. According to her the secret of running is to know why you run and where you are going and leave behind the reason you are running.

Her stories were painful, candid, blunt and straight forward “let me tell you about what I have never been allowed to be. Beautiful and female.” Her story about the history of her family was death, murder, grief, denial, rage and ugliness. The women in her family were measured, manlike, sexless, bearers of babies, laden and scorned. She convinced herself of being unbreakable, an animal with an animal strength and not human at all “…that’s the lie I told myself for years (38).” In her mind the women she loved most in the world horrified her.
However, these were the stories she told and behind them were the stories she doesn’t tell; yet wished she could make her readers hear (39).

These stories were terrifying, kept as a secret, shameful and fearful to tell. “The man raped me, it’s the truth. It’s fact. I was five, and he was eight months married to my mother.” Her step dad raped Allison as child and it took her years to get past the rage, anger, grief of saying words like ‘rape’ and ‘child’. Sadly enough not only did she suffer from sexual abuse but domestic violence as well. She had described her stepfather as a man who wasn’t sure he liked women but was sure he didn’t like smart, tomboys and stubborn little girls who were not afraid of him. She resented this man, a man who had walked across her childhood and the life she had made for herself. Allison continues to tell her story until she brought readers to the point of relief when she finally gathered the courage to say NO to this man for all the abuse (47).

Allison in “Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure” is a voice for people who can’t tell their story, she told other people’s story for them. Her story about her sexuality was intensely told without a trace of fiction. She confesses her meaning of love as a mystery, calamity and a curse that skipped her. One the other hand, sex to her was a country she been dragged into as an unwilling girl and madness of the body. “ For all that it could terrify and confuse me, sex was something I had assimilated. Sex was a game or a weapon or an addiction. Sex was familiar. But love …. was another country (55).” She became a lesbian because of her commitment to a women’s revolution. Her feminist movement was attractive to a lot of women. According to her most women lose their lives not knowing they can do something different.

What makes Allison’s story fascinating is that she can make an ordinary moment inspirational and more so pragmatic that most readers could almost identify themselves with. Her story telling becomes healing, a survival tool for mending the heart, offers strength and prepares you for the worst. She tells stories to prove she was meant to survive “My stories are no parables, no Reader’s Digest unforgettable characters, no women’s movement polemics.. I am not here to make anyone happy. What am here for is to claim my life, my mama’s death, our losses and our triumphs, to name them for myself. I am here to claim everything I know, and there are only two or three things I know for sure (51,52).”