Telling Stories of "Queer White Trash": Race, Class, and Sexuality in the Work of Dorothy Allison

For Plummer, stories of coming out or recovery share a basic narrative structure of suffering, surviving, and surpassing. In order for these stories to be successful, moreover, there must be social worlds embodying community support to receive them.4 Even though Plummer is primarily interested in stories about sex, his formulation is useful for other stories, since, as he argues, all stories share the fact that they are "social actions embedded in social worlds. "5