This is the story of Dorothy Allison. She possesses a very strong ambivalence toward her roots and origins. Their family has been plagued with poverty and misfortune, and it got gradually worse and more inbred from generation to generation, leaving Dorothy with her predicament. Growing up in its most stagnant and wretched lull, where “everything was rotten,” Allison dreams of better things for herself. “I did not want to grow up to be them. I made myself proud of their pride, their determination, their stubbornness, but every night I prayed a man’s prayer: Lord, save me from them. Do not let me become them.” Coming from an almost inescapable poverty, the family was isolated and had a great disconnectedness to the world: “…thumbing through magazines full of women so different from us they could have been another species.” They were left behind to devolve; especially the women.
As she tries to run from her past, throughout the course of her life, she finds that she is forever bound to it, as it reveals precious facts and details that are the only remaining clues that may help to define her. After all, she is who she is mainly because of how she was raised, and who raised her. She was able to use what she had learned to aid her escape and helped her stay gone: the ‘determination’ and that stubbornness; that “Nothing-gonna-stop-you look” about her.” And she was able to get away. But it would be only a matter of time before her past returns and entices her back and she seeks out answers. “No one told me that you take your world with you, that running becomes a habit, that the secret to running is to know why you run and where you are going – and to leave behind the reason you run.” She discovers that it cannot be left behind, or ran from, and that it follows you. This is why one of things she knows for sure is – “if we cannot name our own we are cut off at the root, our hold on our lives as fragile as seed in a wind.” A plant severed from its root will cease to exist; it becomes deprived of something that is vital to its existence.
As she tries to run from her past, throughout the course of her life, she finds that she is forever bound to it, as it reveals precious facts and details that are the only remaining clues that may help to define her. After all, she is who she is mainly because of how she was raised, and who raised her. She was able to use what she had learned to aid her escape and helped her stay gone: the ‘determination’ and that stubbornness; that “Nothing-gonna-stop-you look” about her.” And she was able to get away. But it would be only a matter of time before her past returns and entices her back and she seeks out answers. “No one told me that you take your world with you, that running becomes a habit, that the secret to running is to know why you run and where you are going – and to leave behind the reason you run.” She discovers that it cannot be left behind, or ran from, and that it follows you. This is why one of things she knows for sure is – “if we cannot name our own we are cut off at the root, our hold on our lives as fragile as seed in a wind.” A plant severed from its root will cease to exist; it becomes deprived of something that is vital to its existence.
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