Nina Godridge " River of Names"

Hello, I am Nina Godridge. Today I sat down in the Periodical Room in Neilson Library and read Dorothy Allison's " River of Names" as the title embodies the word ominous as the story that follows does send shivers down your spine. As a read each paragraph I was caught by the graphic details that happened to each family member that Allison could account for. In opening paragraph with the death of Tommy, I was shocked at the age of his death and more-a-less of his death.
" My mama took my head in her hands and turned my eyes away." (Allison, 3) I just wished her mama did that all time, as the horrors continued like a single image of blood. Switching between the past and the present you do see how she has survived after all of that and how she copes with it now, but those imagines must haunt her; she has to be the toughest one out of her whole family. Watching death take place, rape and the mistreating of family members by their own blood. It will send anyone to run away. I think what hurts the most is that some family members killed themselves to escape the torture that was their family. Her cousin Randall might have tried to teach her and Lucille a thing or two about fighting, for which there was no true winner. To be candid, I was disturbed by the imagery portrayed when her step-father grabbed both her and her sister and his way with him, and also just learning how many of the male figures of the family had forced themselves upon the ladies, even at a young age. It's completely sickening. For which I know want to conclude. As it's plain to see how much devastation took part in her childhood that shaped her into the woman she is today; she'll never love a man, produce a child, nor become someone that she isn't. For her reasons are imprints from her childhood that has haunted her mind for years. As I am left to this " I've got a dust river in my head, a river of names endlessly repeating. That dirty water rises in me, all those children screaming out their lives in memory, and I became someone else, someone I have tried so hard not to be." (12)