1. Dorothy Allison stands as a well-known, best-selling author of Southern literature. Allison may be best known for her provocative and honest book Two or Three Things I Know for Sure. In this memoir, Allison recounts her life by emphasizing the abuse, sexual and physical, the Gibson women encountered from their male counterparts. She uses her voice in literature to stress the painful fate she was destined to have because she was born into a poor, white family. Allison specifically claims that race, class, gender, and sexuality are interconnected; furthermore, she professes that poverty in women looks dissimilar to poverty in men.
Toward the beginning of Two or Three Things I Know for …show more content…
This piece discusses what liberation may look like for a group of lesbian-identified, working-class, women of color. They state, “We also often find it difficult to separate race from class from sex oppression because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously,” (“A Black Feminist Statement,” 213). This statement is a rather straight-forward reasoning of intersectionality that is experienced in Two or Three Things I Know for Sure. Furthermore, the women in this text discuss their awareness of “the threat of physical and sexual abuse by men,” (“A Black Feminist Statement,” 211). An obvious trend is visible here with discrimination based off the combination of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Sexual abuse is incredibly prevalent, but it is not limited to women of one race. However, in general, different races experience sexual abuse variously. For example, the women in “A Feminist Statement” suggest that white men rape black women for “political repression,” (“A Black Feminist Statement,” 213). Although, Allison states that white men rape white women because they are poor and have no right to their sexualities or sexual