Two or Three Things I Know for Sure by Dorothy Allison

Two or Three Things I Know for Sure Reviews

• 
  Garima

  A Quick Recommendation
  
  This was a good Year of reading memoirs for me and it helped a great deal in recognizing the art that goes behind writing one. I regard such art to be strictly personal where memories both wispy and vivid try to capture life from a central and peripheral standpoint. Whether it’s about a son talking about her mother and leaving a margin worthy space to mention about
  himself, or the brilliant writer bemoaning the loss of an imperfectly beautiful
  yesterday, or the young man who welcomes life by encountering the
  reality of experience; every person who trust the power of words in order to transform abstract into something tangible, silence into pertinent sound and mistakes into lessons, offers an invaluable gift to the readers.
  
  I am no longer a grown-up outraged child but a woman letting go of her outrage, showing what I know: that evil is a man who imagines the damage he does is not damage, that evil is the act of pretending that some things do not happen or leave no mark if they do, that evil is not what remains when healing becomes possible.
  
  So if I have to suggest (quite emphatically) one such book for anyone and everyone to read then it’s surely going to be Two or Three Things I know for Sure. Dorothy Allison in her profoundly expressive and powerful memoir talks about her lost childhood and creating a loved version of self much against the doomed wishes and fatuous tradition of the world she came from:
  
  ...I thought it was like that story in the Bible, that incest is a coat of many colors, some of them not visible to the human eye, but so vibrant, so powerful, people looking at you wearing it see only the coat. I did not want to wear that coat, to be told what it meant, to be told how it had changed the flesh beneath it, to let myself be made over into my rapist’s creation. I will not wear that coat, not even if it is recut to a feminist pattern, a postmodern analysis.
  
  Courageous, tragic and honest- the things she tells here are things one needs to hear.
  
• 
  Diane

  This is one of the best memoirs I have ever read. I was so blown away by Dorothy Allison's writing that it felt like she had lobbed a grenade into the room, exploding with beautiful and haunting language.
  
  The memoir tells the story of Dorothy's family and her childhood in rural South Carolina. The title comes from something her Aunt Dot used to say: "Lord, girl, there's only two or three things I know for sure ... Only two or three things. That's right. Of course it's never the same things, and I'm never as sure as I'd like to be."
  
  This is how the memoir begins:
  
  "'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."
  
  Isn't that a fantastic opening? This memoir is slim, only 94 pages, but it was so powerful that I had to set the book down a few times to ponder it, or I would stop and reread a page to fully appreciate a lovely phrasing. While there is a lot of sadness in this book, especially when she writes about her mother or the abuse Dorothy suffered as a child, overall her voice was confident and inspiring. The book includes photographs of Dorothy and her family, and those black-and-white pictures added even more depth to the stories.
  
  Throughout the memoir, Dorothy ends a section with something she's learned. These morals were always well-written, and I could imagine this piece being incredibly moving if performed live, with the repetition and the beats of those sayings. These were some of my favorites:
  
  "Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that no one is as hard as my uncles had to pretend to be."
  
  "Two or three things I know for sure, and one is that I would rather go naked than wear the coat the world has made for me."
  
  "Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form."
  
  Besides being a good memoir about the American South, I also appreciated that it was about a writer finding herself, and how she tried to make peace with her unhappy past. I may only know two or three things, but one of them is that I cannot wait to read more of Dorothy Allison's books.
  
  Favorite Quote
  "Women lose their lives not knowing they can do something different. Men eat themselves up believing they have to be the thing they have been made. Children go crazy. Really, even children go crazy, believing the shape of the life they must live is as small and mean and broken as they are told. Oh, I could tell you stories that would darken the sky and stop the blood. The stories I could tell no one would believe. I would have to pour blood on the floor to convince anyone that every word I say is true. And then? Whose blood would speak for me?"
• 
  Duane

  My introduction to Dorothy Allison was
  Bastard Out of Carolina and I was stunned. I knew going in it was partly autobiographical, but it didn't seem possible that this incredible story could have happened. I was so consumed by the story that I didn't even think about the writing until I had finished. I then realized how special and talented Dorothy Allison is. I truly believe that "Bastard" will become a classic.
  
  I say all of this because this book, Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, gives us insight into the history and life experiences of the writer. And it's a history that is just as incredible, just as horrible, as her fictionalized account. Allison isn't the only person that has experienced this kind of abuse, far from it. But very few have the ability to tell the story with the skill and the passion that she does. For anyone interested in Dorothy Allison, her writing, and her incredible story, this memoir is a great place to start.
  
  4.5 stars
• 
  Tatiana

  Most of
  Bastard Out of Carolina was autobiographical. I can't really imagine how anyone could make the choices Dorothy Allison's mother had made. I guess poverty and early abuse forever twist your sense of the world and yourself.
• 
  Larry Bassett

  This book was first published in 1995. The world is catching up and it was finally recorded in Audible in 2020. I listen to it in audible almost a decade after I first read it in print. It is no less stunning than the first time I read it, so I guess the world has not yet totally caught up to this book.
  
  This is a book about sex and lesbianism and incest and rape. But also about a lot more may be like knowing yourself and believing in yourself. It is a short book, but it might stick with you.
  
  ————————-
  I am on a Dorothy Allison binge. This is the fourth book of hers I have read and the third in a row. I have given five stars to the first three.
  
  Her books seem to cover similar territory: she is a feminist, a queer, a storyteller, and had a brutal beginning in life. So far I have not minded the repetition because her stories are done so well and she writes about her roots from both a fiction and nonfiction style. Sometimes it is not clear which is which.
  
  One thing that is added in Two or Three Things I Know for Sure is black and white photographs. You get to see the people you have been reading about, always an interesting experience for me to compare the reality with my mind’s eye. I have listened as Dorothy called herself “white trash” but I look at these photos and just don’t see any white trash.
  
  If you have read any of my other reviews of Dorothy Allison books, you will notice that this review is different. I copies great gobs of the other books into the reviews. I figure this gives readers a chance to experience some of the actual book. And besides I couldn’t really put in my own different words and say it better than the author.
  
  Two or Three Things I Know for Sure is a small book, smaller than 5” x 8” and less than one hundred pages in the hardback. At the back of the book there is an Author’s Note.
  

  Two or Three Things I Know for Sure was written for performance in the months following the completion of my novel, Bastard Out of Carolina. First performed in August 1991 at The Lab in San Francisco, the piece has been performed in a variety of cities and has changed with each production. For publication the work has been substantially revised.

  
  So this is the same story I have been reading over and over with some modifications. But, you know, I am not tired of the story yet. Each time it comes to me a little differently but just as powerfully. This woman has made her life into a work of art and let all of us get to know her intimately in the process. She is worth meeting. I hope you will consider getting to know her in at least one of the venues. Bastard has also been made into a movie if you want to search it out.
  
  I am sure that I will eventually read the two additional books published by Dorothy Allison:
  The Women Who Hate Me: Poetry 1980-1990 and
  Cavedweller .
• 
  Hailey Zipfel

  This is the second I've read by Dorothy Allison, the first was Bastard out of Carolina. I'm not sure whether it's because I'm from South Carolina, a little lost on my own family history, have dealt with similar instances of abuse, or if it's simply the weight and importance of her words, but each time after completing a reading of her work I've had to take a few deep breaths and a solid hour or two to recover.
  
  If you care about sisterhood, about family, about individuality, truth and meaning for the oppressed and repressed, you'll care about Dorothy Allison. She's hard, rough around the edges, and she points straight to the heart of what's real and true--that we've got to start loving each other a little more. From abuse stems anger, hate and self loathing, and not one of those things foster love. Dorothy Allison writes about growing up and out of abuse - and through grit and storytelling learning two of three things about how to love.
• 
  Diane S ☔

  
  https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&s... reading now. Found it here for free.
• 
  Kathrina

  3.5 A good read for a day when you feel down -- when you feel vulnerable to the whispers saying "you're not that smart, you're not that pretty, you're not that strong," Allison reminds you that you are all you need to be and more than you know.
• 
  Claire

  Hidden gem I read in one sitting! A memoir of only 90 pages about growing up working class in the South, about childhood abuse, how girls are sexualised from a young age, and naming love between women when it's unheard of in your community. Page to page it is infused with love and strength; Allison's storytelling is so readable and beautiful and takes back power.
  
  Heard of it through Cvetkovich's An Archive of Feelings
• 
  Laurelas

  Tout petit livre, sous forme d'autobiographie (mais romancée parfois ?) qui retrace les vies, pensées, existences diverses de Dorothy et des femmes de sa famille, le tout parsemé de petites pépites de sagesse ou de réflexions.
  
  Intéressant, mais peut-être qu'il aurait fallu que je le lise après avoir lu d'autres choses de Dorothy Allison d'abord - c'est un tout petit peu abstrait quand on ne connaît pas du tout l'autrice (en tout cas à mon sens)
• 
  Jesska

  I feel like it must be hard to write your memoirs so beautifully that they read like fiction. Example:
  "That beautiful boy my mama loved, as skinny as her, as ignorant and hungry, as proud as he could be to have that beautiful girl, her skin full of heat, her eyes full of hope. And when he ran away, left her to raise me alone, she never trusted any man again--but wanted to, wanted to so badly it ate the heart out of her."
  I could never write something like that about somebody I knew as well as my mama. It's almost embarrassing to come off like you know so much about their lives that you're putting it out there for the whole world to read.. but it was amazing to read.. and I'm consistently amazed by Dorothy Allison.. and I don't know her family for shit so I don't gotta worry about it. Oh shit!
• 
  Josh

  Just because it is short does NOT mean this one doesn't pack a punch. Dorthy Allison, through a mostly true (by her admission) memoir tells the story of her early life and influences good and terrible. Her perspective is from a unique place.......and it ain't pretty. She takes raw inventory of her influences, rejects how she is expected to compute her own life story, and throws out thoughts that will make you think. There is agenda there, but it is supported by background information that will make you see her side of life- however disturbing. You find in here the makings of great short stories, if it weren't for the fact that they are true and stomach turning. I feel like I "get" her, and not because I feel pity for her- it is a more fluid conversation that demands respect.
• 
  Wuttipol✨

  "Behind my carefully buttoned collar is my nakedness, the struggle to find clean clothes, food, meaning, and money. Behind sex is rage, behind anger is love, behind this moment is silence, years of silence."
• 
  Jennifer (formerly Eccentric Muse)

  powerful, fast, intense, honest.
• 
  david

  She is an excellent writer and a good soul.
• 
  Lux

  J'avais été très touchée par le premier Dorothy Allison que j'ai lu : L'histoire de Bone (1992). Un roman largement autobiographique et empli de la violence de son enfance. Ici, on reste dans la continuité puisque la publication initiale de "Two or Three Things I Know for Sure" date de 1995 (et 2021 pour la France... on remercie les éditions Cambourakis !).
  
  C'est très court, mais dense, et on retrouve les mêmes personnages - surtout la mère et la tante de Dorothy (cette dernière ayant prononcé la phrase-titre). L'emphase est sur les femmes : leurs parcours, désillusions, dans une Caroline du Sud où les opportunités se limitaient souvent à être mère au foyer et à enchaîner les grossesses. On va aussi plus loin, avec des moments de vie où Dorothy est adolescente puis adulte, découvre sa sexualité, et fait son coming-out. Elle cherche à exorciser ses souvenirs d'abus sexuel, à ne pas les ramener avec elle dans son lit (partagé).
  
  C'est un très bel essai, où rien n'est jamais sûr et où il faut toujours lutter : contre ses démons personnels, ceux des autres, mais aussi pour garder les souvenirs d'une famille où beaucoup de choses ont été oubliées.
  
  Nb: une superbe note de traduction en avant-propos, qui explique les choix faits concernant la traduction au féminin, masculin ou neutre.
• 
  Peacegal

  The accomplished writer captures succinctly and devastatingly her experience growing up in a troubled, impoverished family in the American South. It's more of a long-form essay, and I could see it being used for discussion in a college lit class or a book group that focused on shorter works and memoirs.
• 
  Angela Brown

  "Two or three things I know, two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that to go on living I have to tell stories, that stories are the one sure way I know to touch the heart and change the world."
  
  This book that is less than 100 pages is the autobiography of novelist Dorothy Allison - or is it? 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. I highly recommend that EVERYONE read this book - it's so unique that I guarentee every one will take something different from it.
• 
  Glenda

  I seem to be in the minority with my low rating but I just didn't see why this was a great story. Not only was it very very short but I just found it disjointed and didn't get the point. I also wanted to know more, she didn't explain a lot of things and usually memoirs are a lot longer. That being said I always hate to give a low rating when I know its about someone's real life.
• 
  Trina

  "Two or three things I know, two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is that if we are not beautiful to each other, we cannot know beauty in any form." Page 86.
  
  I read this book in one sitting. 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.
• 
  Librielibri

  "Vi racconto una storia. Vi racconto la storia che non contiene alcun elemento romanzato, la storia del corpo di donna a cui era stato insegnato a odiare se stesso."
  
  Bel libro di memorie, duro, toccante, tagliente, coraggioso.
  Storie di donne "misurate, mascoline, asessuate, generatrice di bambini, di fardelli e di disprezzo. La mia famiglia? Le donne della mia famiglia?.. Solide, stolide, coi fianchi larghi, macchine per fare figli. Avevamo tutte i fianchi larghi e lo stesso destino. Facce larghe e stupide. "
• 
  Fekete Macska

  Touchant, bouleversant (surtout quand la double page des photos d'elle petite survient juste après le récit de l'inceste), parfois drôle, à lire d'une traite. Gros coup de cœur !
• 
  emily

  probably closer to 4.5. this was a very well constructed memoir about storytelling, womanhood, and lesbianism. the writing was beautiful and made the reading experience all the better.
• 
  Pauline

  Encore un petit livre (87 pages) où l’autrice Dorothy Allison livre ses mémoires : c’est fort, poignant et étrangement comme pour le livre « Betty » beau dans sa façon de raconter
• 
  Lauren Bailey

  Dorothy Allison's author's note (which I didn't see until I'd already finished reading Two or Three Things I Know For Sure) says:
  
  "Two or Three Things I Know For Sure was written for performance in the months following the completion of my novel, Bastard Out of Carolina. First performed in August 1991 at The Lab in San Francisco, the piece has been performed in a variety of cities and has changed with each production. For publication the work has been substantially revised. The names of most family members have been changed and other characters are composites - creations based on friends, family, and acquaintances."
  
  This is the kind of thing that would've infuriated me as an undergrad. 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.
  
  Why, though? 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. The scenes and characters are just a way of getting to that truth.
  
  **Disclaimer: 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 1995.
• 
  Liza

  Dorothy Allison's like the oppositional force to the Tories in my life - I don't think my love for her could possibly be bigger, then I read a new thing she's done and it grows! I cannot even with this gem of a book. It got me wondering if my underlining habit is spiralling out of control or if she's just that fucking good (it is because she is just that fucking good). This was such a healing book for me to read, as a survivor, as a writer, as a dyke. She's fucking magic. I am beginning to pre-emptively mourn the day I have nothing of hers to read for the first time. But more than that I am so excited to read Bastard Out of Carolina! Also I need to get a copy of The Women Who Hate Me and Cavedweller. I should probably make a note of this shopping list elsewhere!
• 
  Joanna

  Powerful and compelling autobiography. Having the author read this work herself for the audio version (on cassette!) really brought the short work to life for me. She was able to pack so much emotion into this telling and to really highlight the repetition of the "two or three things I know for sure" theme. If only I knew anyone else who still listened to cassettes, I'd send this along to share it. Alas, I must be one of the last people out there who still has a cassette deck in the car and doesn't mind pulling out the old tapes once in a while.