"A Question of Class" Discussion Abstract

Madison Zierk
WST 3015
Jeannina Perez
January 30, 2010

Allison, Dorothy. “A Question of Class.” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Ed. Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa- Rey. 5th Ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2009. 112-119. Print.
Allison’s article “A Question of Class” tells of the author’s struggle with growing up as a child of the working class. Not only as a child of the working class, but a lesbian who was trying to work her way out of the working class. In the beginning of the article Allison disscusses her constant need while growing up was to hide who she was. She hid her family history and her life from her lovers, her friends, and anybody else who tried to get to know her. She felt that if she revealed who she was she would move over to “the land of they” (112). This “land of they” was a place where people were ridiculed and looked down on for being different or less fortunate. As being a lesbian and a former working class member, Dorothy felt she had to hide just about everything about herself.
As Allison worked to climb out of the working class (she graduated from high school and earned a college education) she watched her sisters, along with her aunts and cousins, settle for the class that they were born into. They dropped out of high school and worked as waitresses, laundry workers, and counter girls. Over time Dorothy found herself drifting further away from her family. Only every now and then did she remind herself of who she was and where she came from.
One of those days, described in the article, was when Allison had to speak for two different groups. The Episcopalian Sunday School class was made up of all white and were clearly members of the middle and upper classes. The other group, a juvenille detention center, were all women, minorities, and members of the lower middle and working classes. Both groups asked the same kinds of questions but they left Dorothy with a different mix of emotions. She left the Sunday School feeling depressed and on the verge of tears. The juvenille detention center left her grinning from ear to ear.
These two completely different groups led Dorothy Allison to the conclusion that no matter what she did to escape her past and climb out of the working class, she will always be a member of the working class. After this realization, Allison then goes on to discuss her anger towards a system that looks down on those who were not born into a priviledged life. She goes on to say “I understood again that some are given no quarter, no chance, that all their courage, humor, and love for each other is just a joke to the ones wo make the rules, and I hated the rule makers.”(118) The conlusion made by Allison is that society chooses to look down onto others that are different because they feel security for themselves and their communities depends on the oppression of others (119).