When Allison was 16, she stopped her stepfather from beating her in front of friends. He supposedly gave her 16 licks, a tradition in some cultures whereby one gets as many licks as years on one’s birthday. However, he was hurting and humiliating her in front of her friends, so she stood up to him and told him that he could never break her or hit her again. This was a story she told herself then and continues to tell herself even when she isn’t sure that it’s true. The story empowers her, and her mother and aunts have the exact same kinds of stories.

These stories involve trauma. They could be testaments to what makes Allison and the Gibson women broken. Instead, these stories make them strong. The stories have two edges, though. A traumatic story says to the world that one is somehow a victim—but living to tell the story and own one’s experiences says that one is powerful. Knowing the latter is essential, so Allison refuses to let anyone—even feminists—co-opt her stories. They aren’t allegories; they belong to her and are about real, individual people. What she knows is that she can’t make her stories mean something beyond the meanings she ascribes to them.