The Men and the Purpose for her writing this book

     I believe a lot of the problems not only Allison but the women in her family faced was due to the men in their lives.  She even begins talking about them by saying, "The tragedy of the men in my family was silence, a silence veiled by boasting and joke."  You can see her opinion of the men and how the women never talked about it they just dealt with it.  They were troubled people with bad reputations.  Her uncles went to jail, thy had a lot of women, and were not very free.  They were trapped in trying to be hard-faced and tough men, but they really weren't all like that on the inside.  Was it because of there social class?  Did they not feel like they completely provided for there family?  Then again a lot of the men involved like Allison's dad or her aunts husband leave and don't return and leave the women to grieve.  So maybe some of them do feel like they aren't providing for their families well enough and others don't even try.
     One of the men that Allison goes into to detail with is her uncle.  She says,  "I had woken up to her whispering and shifting on that creaky old sofa, the taint of whiskey and tobacco smoke telling me that someone was there, and the hoarse sobs that followed confusing me, for I had never before heard my uncle cry."  In this excerpt from her book you can see that not all the men in her family were truly bad a lot of them were just victims of a lifestyle that they lived in.  I think this is Allison's way of saying that she didn't hate them and she didn't completely blame all men for what happened to the women in her family.


     I believe there are a lot of reasons why she chose to write this book.  I think one was to come to terms with her life when she was a child to figure out how it all pieced together.  To find blame?  comfort? a reason? Probably all of these things.  You can see by the end of the book there seems to be a calming less angry feeling in her righting I think this is a great writing technique but I think it is more than that.  I think it had to do with her actually trying to figure this all out and you can see where she was having the toughest times voicing what she thought and what really happened.  Another reason why she could have wrote this book is to help people understand that you can't just deal with things.  You have to be who you are and if things are going wrong you need to break the bad cycles.  She did.  She started a family and is very happy.  She could be trying to send a message to everyone that it can be done and to not give up hope.