“River of Names,” Dorothy Allison

Connections:

• Being with someone from a different background; a lover finding novelty in something painful in your past; the realization that your background is actually not normal; being intrigued by the “fairy tale” life of others, and loving them while hating them for it; keeping that feeling from driving you apart or keeping you from being together
• Terrible stories; these are stories I have not personally lived but have heard others tell; students that I teach have stories of rape, incest, violence; the experiences of the narrator, while not having happened all at once to one family, are similar to the experiences that have been shared with me
• Making stories more amusing than they actually are as a coping mechanism in my own tellings and the stories I’ve been told; when your stories have a certain degree of incredulity to begin with, it’s just easier to make it all sound funny and exaggerated
• “Getting out” and moving away or moving on; in my family, this is defined by education and leaving the home; I have both gone to college and moved out of my parents’ home

Disconnections

• Rural life; farm animals; the anonymity that comes from living off the road or in a large family that keeps its secrets
• Victimization and extreme poverty; abuse and incest; fear of your own home and having go inside of yourself
• Lesbianism; the feelings of family towards your sexuality; pursuing a life that is so far from the lives of your family

Questions I Have

Is she really lying? Is the “lying” excuse just a cover-up for the reality that she can’t bear to admit is her history? Has she overthought all of these memories, and so the piecing together of her past feels like lying or actually is lying? Is all storytelling lying? Is she just a storyteller?

Where is she that she has “gotten out” and feels like a survivor? Has she gotten out of the town (physically getting out), or has she gotten out of the lifestyle (mentally getting out)? What defines getting out for this family and for the narrator? Is it breaking the cycle of violence? Is it education? Is it leaving? Is it not marrying and not having children? Has she really gotten out of the cycle or has she just stopped it at herself? Does it count as breaking free of the cycle if the demons are still inside of you, and instead of changing yourself and what’s in you, you’ve simply stagnated?

Can she really not have children? Does this mean that she cannot physically have children or is it that she cannot bear to have children, that she cannot bear to continue the cycle?