The Truth is in the Telling
A Synopsis of All That I’m Asking
Weeks after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in the spring of 1968, New Yorker Alice Kaplan’s father dies in New York City. Hysterical and grieving her husband, her mother informs her that she can no longer afford Cornell’s tuition. Though the dean increases her scholarship, Alice chooses to stay home with her mother, who seems too vulnerable to live alone. In so doing, Alice loses her chance of becoming editor-in-chief of her Ivy League newspaper. Then, her college boyfriend drops her, and on a date with her boss, he tries to rape her.
Alice is thus catapulted into the adult world. She begins a new job for a New York City publishing company and attends Audre Lorde’s poetry reading where the black poet reads a poem about her love for a woman and inspires her with her courage. There, also, a high school friend invites her to join her feminist newspaper, Pandora’s Scoop. Although Alice has doubts about the value of this second wave feminism, she has no other outlet for her writing and joins that paper. Later, when interviewing Lorde for the paper, the poet inspires her further with her commitment to speaking the truth.
Alice visits Cornell where she hopes to rekindle her relationship with her boyfriend. When he won’t commit to her, she leaves him. Weeks later, she finds herself pregnant. Devastated, she faces the daunting challenge of obtaining an illegal abortion she can afford. Finally, her oldest friend, Darlene, directs her to an abortionist in DC.
Her high school friend, Firetruck invites her to protest Nixon’s inauguration in Washington, DC where the only women speakers—Shulamith Firestone and Marilyn Webb—are jeered and threatened by the largely male crowd. Alice then embraces the feminism she’d dismissed months before. She interviews the two women for Pandora’s Scoop, attends the first-ever abortion Speak-out they initiate, and writes about it for her paper. During the long haul to DC and back, Firetruck proves himself a support, enabling Alice to consider him boyfriend material.
Darlene asks her to dine with her boyfriend, Eddie, and his friend, who are on probation for their involvement in a fencing operation. Indebted to her, Alice can’t say no. But when Darlene asks her to hide their stolen jewelry, Alice refuses, putting her at odds with her friend. Petrified of the men’s retaliation and scared by their accusation that she hid their jewelry, she leans on Firetruck for support. After a detective questions Alice about their fencing operation, Darlene gets the men to rescind that accusation that she was involved.
Alice’s mother discovers her article on the Speak-out, which includes the story of her abortion. Hurt that Alice has told everyone about her abortion but her, her mother kicks her out of the apartment. Later, Alice discovers that her mother has a boyfriend of her own.
A week after moving to her own apartment, Alice returns to her mother’s home where the women reconcile, each acknowledging the other’s right to independence.