The End of Blogger

                Dorothy Allison struggled with the same idea that I personally, and many others struggle with. Is our life already predetermined by our family? Allison’s family was the towns’ white trash, and everyone in the community knew it. Allison felt as though even when she was a virgin no one would view her as such because everyone in town knew that single motherhood ran in her family and she would probably have to deal the same fate as well. Allison struggled with the desire she had to break the mold of a bitter unwanted woman that the rest of the woman in her family felt. As a reader we may only hear Allison’s side of the story, but if her family was the way they were portrayed they felt every bit of the anguish that Allison did.

                What’s one way to break the stereotype of your family? For Allison’s case she automatically broke the mold of being a lesbian. Since most of the woman in her family were viewed as loose woman because they all had children out of wedlock. Dorothy being a lesbian looked to escape that. (Yet now that I have finished this book I’m completely puzzled how she had a child.) Never the less she felt smothered by the idea that she would be forced to share the rest of the families’ fate of an unhappy life. The women in her family were only viewed as individuals with “birthing hips” and since that’s the only lifestyle that the woman knew that was the only thing they were confident in doing. When someone believes that their only real skills are what others tell them, then they too believe that those things are their only purpose. Such as Dorothy’s sister Wanda felt that same impact in her life. When Wanda went to visit Dorothy after she magically had a child she “Later she told me she’d only come to save herself another pregnancy.” (Page 88)

                I’m glad that we ended this class with this book. In a time as stressful as finals an easy and quick read like this was exactly what was needed. For being a Woman’s Literature class I appreciate that for the most part all the woman in the stories were strong willed and boisterous. These stories this semester were in some ways inspiring but for the most part I viewed them as something that got my mind thinking. A test of a good book is that once your done reading it, it still stays with you. And for almost all the stories we have done they have done exactly that. I take Two or Three Things I know For Sure as an example of this. An example of escaping the fate that our families and society try to instill on us, which is why as a student we stride for higher education.