Two or Three Things I Know for Sure

Table of Contents

 

 

“Captures Allison’s raw gifts as a storyteller.... She ponders the uses and limits of fiction in a world where truth can be the most brutal story of all.”

—
The New York Times Book Review

 

“A model memoir, harrowing in its depiction of family truths, however painful ... generous to others and unsparing of the author, and written in simple language that verges toward a kind of rough-hewn poetry.”

—
Seattle Post-Intelligencer

 

“Any time she says, ‘Let me tell you a story,’ all she has to do is name the time and the place. I’ll be there.”

—Geoffrey Stokes,
The Boston Sunday Globe

 

“Her stories—and life—are a triumph of love over cruelty. Read it aloud and savor the rhythms.”

—
Publishers Weekly

 

“A book of wisdom, a book of medicines.... One feels the vicious, devouring cycle of rage and pain defeated.”

—
Los Angeles Times Book Review

DOROTHY ALLISON is the National Book Award finalist and bestselling author of the novel
Bastard Out of Carolina; Cavedweller; Trash; Skin: Talking About Sex, Class and Literature;
and
The Women Who Hate Me.
She lives in northern California.

“WITH THE GRACE AND SURENESS THAT ARE THE VERY HALLMARKS OF HER EXQUISITE STYLE, [DOROTHY ALLISON] HAS DONE IT AGAIN ... WITH THIS BEAUTIFUL, PROVOCATIVE, AND PROBING
MEMOIR.”

—
NEW YORK NATIVE

 

“Poetic and allusive ... Allison eloquently reveals as much about her art as her past.”

—
Entertainment Weekly

 

“Evocative storytelling ... beautifully written, powerful stuff.”

—
St. Petersburg Times

 

“Unflinching ... sinewed and muscular prose.”

—
Buffalo News

 

“A lyrical meditation on what it is to be young, poor, and female.... At once touching and funny.”

—
City Paper

 

“Beautiful ... a spiritual autobiography that renews the human spirit.... I never want to stop reading this story.”

—Jennifer Hemler,
Philadelphia City Paper

 

“Allison is a literary treasure ... her volume of memories is written in powerful, fiercely beautiful prose.”

—
Etcetera

 

“A rich memoir.... Allison ... tells her sad tales with a lyricism that lifts them into another realm. ‘Let me tell you a story’ is her refrain. And we do, we let her tell away.”

—
Kirhus Reviews

 

“A tapestry of remembrances both bright and muted.”

—
Booklist

 

“Her graceful pen has become a tool for mining wisdom from painful experiences.”

—
Santa Rosa Press Democrat

 

“Beautiful, powerful, touching.”

—
In Pittsburgh

 

“Compelling, mesmerizing ... masterfully celebrates her family’s indomitable women.”

—
Portland Williamette Week

 

“Allison’s unsparing, pungent memoir is at once funny and chilling to the bone.”

—
Greenville State

 

“A powerful, spare, sharply written memoir ... moving.”

—
Greensboro News and Record

 

“Allison’s storytelling shifts into an act of profound healing, a survival tool for mending the heart, sending you back into the world strong, ready, and deeply, deeply loved.”

—
The Advocate

 

 

 

 

PLUME
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Rmgwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontano, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

 

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

 

Published by Plume, an imprint of Dutton Signet,
a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.
Previously published in a Dutton edition.

 

First Plume Printing, August, 1996

Copyright © Dorothy Allison, 1995

All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

 

The Library of Congress has catalogued the Dutton edition as follows:

 

Allison, Dorothy.

Two or three things I know for sure / Dorothy Allison.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-12798-8

I. Allison, Dororhy—Drama. 2. Women authors, American—20th century—
Drama. 3. Poor women—United States—Drama. 4. Feminists—United
States—Drama. 5. Lesbians—United States—Drama. 6. Family—
United States—Drama. I. Title.
PS3551.L453Z476 1995
812’.54—dc20

95-17752

CIP

 

 

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, srored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

 

BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR SERVICES FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN BOOKS USA INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10014.

“LET ME TELL YOU A STORY,” I used to whisper to my sisters, hiding with them behind the red-dirt bean hills and row on row of strawberries. My sisters’ faces were thin and sharp, with high cheekbones and restless eyes, like my mama’s face, my aunt Dot’s, my own. Peasants, that’s what we are and always have been. Call us the lower orders, the great unwashed, the working class, the poor, proletariat, trash, lowlife and scum. I can make a story out of it, out of us. Make it pretty or sad, laughable or haunting. Dress it up with legend and aura and romance.

“Let me tell you a story,” I’d 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 about the women who ran away. All those legendary women who ran away.” I’d tell about the witch queens who cooked their enemies in great open pots, the jewels that grow behind the tongues of water moccasins. After a while the deepest satisfaction was in the story itself, greater even than the terror in my sisters’ faces, the laughter, and, God help us, the hope.

The constant query of my childhood was “Where you been?” The answer, “Nowhere.” Neither my stepfather nor my mother believed me. But no punishment could discover another answer. The truth was that I did go nowhere—nowhere in particular and everywhere imaginable. I walked and told myself stories, walked out of our subdivision and into another, walked all the way to the shopping center and then back. The flush my mama suspected hid an afternoon of shoplifting or vandalism was simple embarrassment, because when I walked, I talked—story—talked, out loud—assum—ing identities I made up. Sometimes I was myself, arguing loudly as I could never do at home. Sometimes I became people I had seen on television or read about in books, went places I’d barely heard of, did things that no one I knew had ever done, particularly things that girls were not supposed to do. In the world as I remade it, nothing was forbidden ; everything was possible.