Female Identity and Solidarity: Dorothy Allison's "Two or Three Things" Gillian Gunawan College

Dorothy Allison’s autobiographical narrative Two or Three Things I Know for Sure examines how a lower-class upbringing has affected the identities of the women in her family. Beauty, inadvertently, becomes one of the most valued things among her family members, a perceived lack of which shapes Allison as a person. Through a lens of intersectional feminism, a story of male entitlement, the way Allison combats it, and female solidarity is woven into her lyrical prose.

The women of Allison’s family were taught that beauty did not exist for them, “[they] are the ones in all those photos taken at mining disasters, floods, fires. [They] are the ones in the background with [their] mouths open, in print dresses or drawstring pants and collarless smocks, ugly and old and exhausted. Solid, stolid, wide-hipped baby machines” (33). The men of her family constantly degrade the women, subscribing to an outdated mindset that says women are inferior and that their only purpose in the world is to be mothers. From birth, men are socialized to believe the world owes them something and that they deserve everything. Patriarchal society teaches women to minimize themselves—“Don’t eat too much, don’t talk too loudly, don’t take up too much space, don...