Prior to reading these two articles, I had never heard of Dorothy Allison. After reading them, I do not think I will forget her. “A Question of Class” and “Don’t Tell Me You Don’t Know” grabbed my attention, but I could relate to “A Question of Class” more. Thankfully, I did not live in poverty the first eighteen years of my life like Dorothy Allison did. Also, I never experienced any kind of sexual abuse. Therefore, I cannot completely relate to her, but I can personally understand some aspects of what she had to say.
I was born during a war in Croatia in 1993, so my parents did not have much the first six years of my life. Even though I was young, and do not remember how much my parents struggled, the poverty we faced did impact my life. Allison would agree that poverty impacts a person’s life, she wrote two articles about it. I learned to not take things for granted, especially my education. I have always taken school seriously, and worked hard to earn good grades. Dorothy Allison also thought education was important because she wanted to get out of poverty. I can understand that, if your parents struggled, you
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Allison said, “I began to work even harder to put as much distance as I could between my family and me” (“A Question of Class,” p. 5). I think family is everything and they are the people who are supposed to love you no matter what. I understand that she was angry with her mother for not leaving her sexually abusive husband, but that did not mean her mother did not love her. Also, she talked throughout “A Question of Class” about how she lied about her life and what poverty was really like. She was ashamed of her family and she rarely spent time with them once she went to college. I understand that she separated herself because she was angry, but her mother and siblings struggled as well and it was not right to leave them