SOURCE: “Nothing but the Truth,” in Women's Review of Books, Vol. 11, No. 12, September, 1994, pp. 10–11.

In the following positive review, Graff praises Allison for writing about such controversial subject matter in Skin: Talking about Sex, Class, & Literature.

I moved East in 1980, fresh from a small-town university “women's” community whose worst splits were over who'd slept with whose girlfriend. So I was surprised when, in Boston, I saw odd, wounded looks on women's faces when they talked—or declined to talk—about recent political history. Someone's restaurant had been boycotted and failed. Someone else refused to meet me, ever, at the women's center, site of an infamously vicious community meeting. Someone else's phone was tapped. Apparently here not “women's” but “community” belonged in quotes. I quailed as I realized how serious were questions of what it meant to be a woman—or more to the point, a feminist. Knowing I...