Nina Godridge's Review of the Readings

Hello everybody, it's Nina Godridge back again with another segment of...this is what I read today and here is my review. Today it's Nam Le's " Hiroshima" and Annie Proulx's " People In Hell Just Want A Drink of Water." Both short stories each take place during historical moments in time, it either being Hiroshima during WWII or south of the United States where droughts and dust clouded the minds of all.
I have to give around of applause for Proulx; set between two families the reader gets to know the back story to each family. The Dunmires and the Tinsley's don't intertwine until the end, but leading up to that moment when Jax and Horm are talking about purchasing a windmill. One part of the story that shocked me personally is when Mrs. Tinsely throws her own daughter over the wagon and into the water, " The child's white dress filled with air and it floated a few yards in the swift current, then disappeared beneath a bower of willows at the bend." That sentence to me is so haunting, just imagining the dress flow down the river with the body of the child. Not to mention after she does this, she is traumatized to the point where she gets anxiety of keeping her children alive at all times.
"Hiroshima" spoke to me on a different leave to which I left like I was back in New York City when 9/11 happened. Everyone is on edge, waiting for the bombs to strike down, living in fear. Even though the narrator is content in the sense that fear isn't running through her mind at every moment, she is telling us her life: attending boarding school, spending time with her older sister and taking a photograph with her family. These are the moments she treasures. My favorite part of the story is scene when her and the fellow classmates, with the use of imagery we can imagine ourselves being there:
" At exercise time I run with some of the others to the top of the hill. Running is good to stop the cold but bad for the hunger that comes after. The day is white and clear and cloudless. From the top of the hill we can see another hill, and behind that, the ocean. The ocean is a darker blue than the sky. Behind the hill is the city. We are safe here."