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| Two or Three Things I Know for Sure | 
| List Price: $12.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (based on 24 reviews)
Sales Rank: 21775
Category: Book
Author: Dorothy Allison
Publisher: Plume
Studio: Plume
Manufacturer: Plume
Label: Plume
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 112
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.3 x 4.7 x 0.3
ISBN: 0452273404
Dewey Decimal Number: 812.54
EAN: 9780452273405
ASIN: 0452273404
Publication Date: August 1, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
An autobiographical work adapted from a performance piece explores such topics love and loss, beauty and terror, and the intricacies of family love and hatred, while illuminating the harsh world of rural poverty in the South. Reprint. NYT.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 19 more reviews...
 Spare and evocative book October 22, 2008
This is a quick read, but packs a lot of power. The author isn't afraid to lay her life out for you, and all her emotions, past and present. Its doubly touching to note, this book was originally an oral presentation she wrote.
 It's never the same thing July 29, 2008
Dorothy Allison's Aunt Dot said she only new two or three things for sure and added, "Of course,they are never the same things." This slim volume, a family history memoir, celebrates the way that women know and affirms that what women know is different from what men know. Allison not only tells an engaging story, she tells her story with clear compassion for all concerned. That doesn't mean she hedges around about the truth. It means that one of the things she knows for sure is that "if we are not beautiful to each other, then we cannot know beauty in any form." Compassion goes along with being beautiful to one another. This book is both honest and forgiving. and as such reminds us to look with an open heart on our life circumstances. Don't compound the hurt or the suffering with hate suggests Allison in a mere 94 pages. I suspect most people will want to read this book more than once. I pull it out when when I feel my heart closing and each time, the thing I come to know is never the same thing.
Allison shares her secrets, plumbs her own depths to find joy February 21, 2008
"Let me tell you a story," is how the author of BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA begins her autobiographical journey, alerting the reading audience from the start that she is a storyteller first and foremost above all else: above her being a woman, a daughter, a sister, a lesbian, a survivor. Indeed, she creates and tells stories in order to better define those qualities she has, the labels she possesses, and with an effort towards cleansing her soul of ugliness in favor of beauty and hope.
Originally designed as a performance piece, that she staged in San Francisco at The Lab in August of 1991, Allison reworked the spoken narrative into this flowing, written memoir.
There are many inspiring, defiantly unsentimental portions of the book, which serve to display Allison's valiant attempts to heal herself while becoming an artist. Unfortunately, there are also Anne Lamott-type lapses into cliche and sap and faux-inspiring writing that fails to ring completely true. The pictures of Allison and the family she writes about that accompany the book are vivid and add an even greater genuineness to the text.
A scene that encapsulates the tone of the book, as well as describing Allison's life-long struggle and that of the girls and women she loves, appears near the end of the book, when Dorothy is visiting her sister and pre-adolescent niece. "I looked into my niece's sunburned frightened face. Like her mama, like her grandmama, like her aunts -- she had that hungry desperate look that trusts nothing and wants everything. She didn't think she was pretty. She didn't think she was worth anything at all." Heartbreaking, real and a truth that haunts the women in Allison's family from generation to generation until... when? That's a question that the author refuses to deal with, probably more out of fear for its answer than anything else.
On a side note, I saw Allison appear live at an event in Orange County in 2006. She was fiery, profane, fearless, and struck me as a serious truthseeker with a motivating message for aspiring writers and aspiring humanists. I was at first taken aback by her brashness, her unapologetic stance about people and politics and education. But as she continued on, she became less guarded, more sympathetic, and ultimately more loving than someone who's seen so much hatred and so much abuse should be expected to be. She was, truly, an inspiring figure up there on the stage.
This book. August 30, 2007
Dorothy Allison:
No one has put the struggle to be human in terms as stark, alive, and
desperate and uncertain.
This book is necessary because it reminds even those who don't want to believe it that we are in that terrible, possibly beautiful and desperate place--just trying to get our leg muscles to work, or our hearts.
Moving mini-memoir December 15, 2006
Done originally as a theater piece, "Two Or Three Things I Know For Sure" is moving, a quick read, and educational. In other words, it's everything you'd expect from one of our finest contemporary writers. I didn't see it when it was performed as a show. As a memoir, it is very good. My only criticism is -- and it is not so much as a criticism as a wish -- that I wanted to know more, especially about Allison's Aunt Dot and her mother. The book is generously illustrated with photographs of Allison and her family through the years. There is a piece in the book family photographs in a box, pictures of relatives Allison knew little, if anything, about. I would have loved if that section were expanded upon, and maybe to have seen some of the photos. Succinct and thought-provoking (not to mention heart-tugging), this short book makes for a valuable reading experience.
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