Two or Three Things I Know for Sure

Two or Three Things I Know for Sure has ratings and reviews. Garima said: A Quick RecommendationThis was a good Year of reading memoirs for m.
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In my classroom, I hope to do a better job of helping students see the connection between their writing and their reading. Last year, I often asked my students to write in response to what they read, but rarely did I ask them to imitate an author's style, to think about the authors we read as writers, and to think about themselves as reading like writers. Opening Texts by Kathy Andrasick and Creating the Story by Rebecca Rule and Susan Wheeler have also helped me see the importance of reading like a writer and how imitating a text can help students do this.

Writing is really a lively communal activity. Being in a writing group this summer and sharing our writing with partners and with the whole group during presentations has reminded me of the importance of the communal aspect of writing. Don Murray points out in Crafting a Life that writing involves contradictory needs of solitude and community. Too often, I write in solitude. Being in a writing group this summer for five weeks and committing to this group for the rest of the year, though we won't meet as frequently as we did this summer, has brought to life the importance of audience for me in a deeper, practical way.

When I read aloud my writing to my group, I notice things about it that didn't appear to me when I was reading it alone. Hearing from my group what stands out, how they understand certain lines, and what questions they have, help me get a sense of what is effective and what is not effective in my writing. Sometimes I wish they would just make huge generalizations like "this is good" or "this is boring," or tell me what to fix and where to go next, but ultimately those are my decisions to make and meeting with this live audience regularly holds me accountable for making those decisions.

I've also become more attuned to group dynamics and group processes. Watching my group's relationship evolve has reminded me of how important regular meeting times and being with the same people can be in forming a sense of a writing community. Several presentations during the institute also helped me think about the importance of enlarging one's writing community through publishing in print or on the Internet. This is another idea I've thought was a good one in theory, but these presentations pushed me to think about publishing for myself and for my students more seriously. Despite what Dorothy Allison's aunt said about how the things she knows for sure change, I can say there is one thing I know for sure that doesn't change: To have a sense of self that allows the self-conscious act of telling stories, of living the writing life.

At the same time, you feel how she has, how we all, suffer to belong to a clan, and suffer through belonging to a clan. She's an intellectual and a dyke. She's 12 and white trash and hungry for that inexplicable something. The inner conflict may never go away, becoming part of who we are, mellowing or dulling into something we need to write about, to fictionalize, to get it out, purge, cleanse, make peace with.

And it feels like this is what she's doing, ending the text with the introduction of her son, a new beginning and a new generation. The only thing wrong with this book is that it's too short. I never want to stop reading this story.

Two or Three Things I Know for Sure

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Website design, managed and hosted by DEP Design, depdesign. Allison includes numerous family photos that remind me of my own childhood, sisters, and birth family. Her s Two or Three things I Know for Sure by Dorothy Allison is a poignant memoir about sexual abuse and family and a quick read of just ninety-four pages.

Allison uses the refrain throughout the book to restate, summarize, and draw conclusions. The story of what happened, or what did not happen but should have—that story can become a curtain drawn shut, a piece of insulation, a disguise, a razor, a tool that changes every time it is used and sometimes becomes something other than we intended.

Details of book follow. Allison runs partly, and that is what is so sad and hard to read, only partly, because she is sexually abused from the time she is five until she is fifteen and because she is a lesbian. Feb 18, Lauren Bailey rated it it was amazing Shelves: The names of most family members have been changed and other characters are composites - creations based on friends, family, and acquaintances. I would have considered it betrayal of the worst kind. I would've stood up and yelled at my professor for assigning this to me in a creative nonfiction class, would have written an angry, open letter to Dorothy Allison condemning her for disrespecting the genre.

I would have refused to listen to anyone's arguments either for or against her, and then I would have dismissed her entirely. Lately I've been seeing the genre a little differently. I still don't think it's okay to knowingly make things up and call it creative nonfiction. And I still feel uncomfortable knowing not every creative nonfiction writer feels this way, so when someone's fact check turns up misinformation, it discredits all of us. But I also don't think I have any right to decide who is and isn't lying, and who has written a novel based on a true story rather than a memoir.

Dorothy Allison may have fabricated some of the scenes in this book. She may even have fabricated all of them. Does that make this not a memoir? I can't believe I'm saying this, but no. It doesn't, because the characters she describes hardly matter. She's saying something bigger in these 94 pages, something about being a victim of abuse and a lesbian and a Gibson woman, that is absolutely true.

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The scenes and characters are just a way of getting to that truth. None of this means I'm suddenly okay with fabrication, exaggeration, or outright trickery. Dorothy did include that author's note, after all. Plus, this memoir was published in The slim volume should be required reading. It is raw, filled with emotion which cuts to the bone. Tales of searing pain and loss, loss, even, of what one has never possessed. Ultimately, though, a book of hope, hope springing from the very fact that the book exists. It is, I suppose, a book meant for other women, but one whose greatest potential lesson might be for men, could they somehow be persuaded to read it.

In a world where boys are raised to believe high school athletes can rape with impunity, it might shed light that the harm done goes far beyond one specific victim, that the damage is, in addition, to society itself. Of salvation and escape in story. Again, it is a story filled with pain, rendered all the more stark by Allison's down-to-earth, conversational prose.

Two or Three Things I Know for Sure

In the end, though, a sense of uplift prevails, the feeling that woman have the potential to triumph over whatever adversity comes their way. Aug 15, Angela Brown rated it it was amazing Shelves: Although the impression that I got was that the stories were true, the whole book is littered with phrases that make the reader doubt where true life ends and her story telling takes over. She began the story with her childhood, a graphic description of how her family fit perfectly in the "white trash" mind set.

It wasn't until she became a young adult that she realized that she was in charge and she didn't have to wear the "coat" the world had made for her. This is one of the few books that makes me cry every time I read it. She got some harsh reviews, a lot of them dealing with the length of the book and her outspoken views regarding sex but I find those reviews ridiculous. Sure, the book is short, but what's inside is some of the most uniquely written prose I've ever read. She seems to have woven truth and fiction into a completely different genre.

Her opinions of sex are unique but not unfounded. I think she gives the reader a great understanding behind her views. This is one of my favorite books. Jan 12, Javier rated it it was amazing. I read this book in one sitting. While I sometimes grow tired of Dorothy Allison's seeming inability as a writer to grow beyond her own background, I also love the strength with which she relishes it, and re-tells it, over and over again, and grows strong in the telling, even telling about horrible things, things we would normally leave to the dominion of the unspeakable.

Ultimately, I feel she is a beacon of love and light in a dark world. Aug 14, Trina rated it it was amazing. It was raw and gritty and painful to read at times, yet so beautifully written and another reminder to me of how often real life is messy and it is what makes us real. Sep 12, Kathrina rated it liked it Shelves: May 15, david rated it it was amazing. She is an excellent writer and a good soul.

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Oct 08, jo rated it it was amazing Shelves: Apr 15, Jesi rated it it was amazing Shelves: But it was beautiful and moving. I would teach this in two of my dream syllabi: I thought that I would enjoy this more but I truthfully didn't want to read details about the author's love affairs with women, not exactly my cup of tea.

Aug 08, Mel rated it really liked it Shelves: Allison also admits this text was originally meant as a performance piece, this aspect definitely gave the piece a different feel. I read several sections out loud. This offers a new dimension to the text.

Two or Three Things I Know For Sure About Teaching Writing

One can hear the story told. The women are composites—successful composites. They resemble smoking, cussing women all over the southern United States. Allison presents her picture of these women, filtered through her experiences; some of which may be difficult for others to grasp. But her characters could be next door, or up the street. Everyone from small-town America knows the girl who was desperate to find a perfect life in the big city, only to return broken and defeated.

Two or Three Things I Know for Sure by Dorothy Allison | leondumoulin.nl

Throughout the text Allison hangs on to what is important to her in small-town America without letting her reader forget that she has moved on and made dramatic changes in her personal reality. Changes, which in many ways, permanently remove her from that small town setting. I got this book from the Strand for my first semester of college in I was supposed to read it during a writing class about memoir. I didn't read it, but I read an additional essay by Dorothy Allison and I liked that, so I always kept the book.

In retrospect that was my best class that term.

My sister is at the same point in college now, so it seemed fitting to work this one out finally. When I finally opened the book I discovered a receipt for its purchase tucked inside, from a Brentano's I got this book from the Strand for my first semester of college in This book falls squarely into the category of things I avoided because I worried there wasn't time, that turn out to take no time at all. It's so slight, which surprised me the whole time until I got to the last page where the author notes that it was written as a performance piece and modified for publication.