River of Names

Dorothy Allisons, River of Names, is a metaphorical title. At the end of the short story, it is learned that this title relates to the narrator's memories of all of his cousins that have died and the terrible things that they were put through as children.

This story has the narrator looking back at her life while with her girlfriend. I think that the reasoning for the girl deciding to be a lesbian is not necessarily because that is what she thought would make her happy, but instead, as a safety thought for herself that she would never treat her children in the ways that she and her cousins were treated by their older family members. If she physically can not have kids then she does not have to worry about how the kids' lives would be and how they were treated.

One thing I found interesting was how the girl lied to her girlfriend Jesse. Lies came often, consisting of things even as small as what her grandmother smelled like. Jesse even tells the narrator how awesome she thinks it would have had to be to have such a large family - making it obvious that she really knew nothing but lies about the narrator's past. Even towards the end of the story, when the narrator wakes up afraid, she turns it into a joke as soon as the girlfriend seems concerned and then begins shaking again once the girlfriend has fallen back asleep. Her past is something that she is ashamed and embarrassed of.

The kids of this family were raped, beaten, killed, and greatly mistreated. They resorted to stealing, drinking and drugs to waste time and escape from their real lives. The family sounds almost like a swarm of flies - one dying off after another. When asking one how many kids she has, she replies with the question of how many DOES she have? Or how many HAS she had? The fact that that question would even have to be asked in such a situation blew my mind. It is apparent the great effects that such a childhood had on this narrator. As stated earlier, she is a lesbian. At one point she says that she woke up with her hands around her neck. I guessed that this was as in an act of strangling someone. It scares her and she begins to get upset. Through that part of the story, I think the author was trying to show once again the large impact that the past had and how easily it had become part of her life - violence being something that did not even come voluntarily to her.

pleurisy (p 11) - inflammation of the pleura, with or without a liquid effusion in the pleural cavity, characterized by a dry cough and pain in the affected side.
"But afterward, it was a bad year with my sister down with pleurisy, then cystitis..."