This Is Me

                                                                                                                                                                                                              

This Is Me

February 15, 2023

                                     
                        (Stahl, Tom. “This Is Me.” Flickr.com, Flickr, 31 Aug. 2016, https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomstahl/31561126266. Accessed 15 Feb. 2023.) 

 

 

                                                                                                                           This Is Me

                   In Dorothy Allison's short personal story titled "Context" (1994), Ms. Allison expresses the fact that in order to truly know someone, you must know their background, their family, and how they socialize. Ms. Allison tells her story through fragmented experience and chronological order. She takes  her experiences and those around her to tell her story. Ms. Allison's story was written in order to show that if you want to truly understand someone, you should get to know their family, background, and social/economic status as surprises/clashes can occur when these aren't understood fully. Ms Allison's intended audience would be people of varying economic and social backgrounds as her story tells of confusion and embarrassment when these different economic/social backgrounds come to interact with each another. 

                   While reading Ms. Allison's personal story I was intrigued and I felt a sense of relation to her experience. For a part of my childhood I grew up in Meter Georgia, in terms of opportunity and scenery there wasn't much down there and there still isn't. When I moved to a place of better economic and social status I felt embarrassed because I did things differently. I wore different clothes, had a different accent, and just felt like like I didn't belong. I'm glad Ms. Allison wrote this story on her personal experience because it highlights the differences between how people understand and interact with each other based on differing backgrounds and status.

                   In Ms. Allison's short personal essay, she explains why you should know someone's background, their family, and how they socialize to truly know and understand them as a person. Ms. Allison talks about her experience with differing economic/social statuses and how they can sometimes clash if not understood thoroughly. In her short personal essay, Ms. Allison states, "We had owned an air conditioner, never stayed in a motel, never eaten in a restaurant where my mother did not work. Context" (Allison 11). This quote is important because it highlights her background and what she is experiencing right now which is confusion as she did not grow up with these luxuries. Ms. Allison also states, "My lover was a Yankee girl from a good family, who had spent the summer of her childhood on the Jersey Shore. I had gone there with her, walked with her on the beaches of her memory, wide and flat and grey-white, so clean I felt intimidated. Seeing where she had grown up, meeting some of her family, I had understood her better, seen where she came from, and her pride" (Allison 11). This quote is important and relates to the overall message because it explains how Ms. Allison was understanding, although intimidated of a background different from hers. Ms. Allison learned and accepted the background, she accepted where her lover came from and how she was raised. Therefore, she was able to understand her lover and who her lover was as a person even more. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                          Works Cited

 Allison, Dorothy. Skin : Talking about Sex, Class, and Literature, Open Road Integrated Media, Inc., 1994. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/claytonstate/detail.action?docID=1807449.

    (Stahl, Tom. “This Is Me.” Flickr.com, Flickr, 31 Aug. 2016, https://www.flickr.com/photos/tomstahl/31561126266. Accessed 15 Feb. 2023.)