River of Names

Hi! This is Cathy Lee.

I found River of Names to be a raw, emotional piece, the most devastating aspect of which being the fact that the narrator, although physically distanced from her abusive family, nonetheless has to face the ordeal of reliving her traumatic experiences even during her adult life. The narrator’s storytelling is structured: she alternates between describing warm moments with Jesse (that are nevertheless tainted by her past experiences) and recounting acts of violence performed on children by her own family members, as if to show just how her childhood trauma has pervaded every aspect of her life. It has even changed who she is fundamentally, as exemplified in her (and her sister’s) uncharacteristic inclinations towards violence, due to their being raised in an environment that reacted to every act of disobedience by metering out physical punishments. Subsequently, I felt relief when reading about the narrator pulling her sister away and preventing her from harming her baby, putting physical distance between mother and son. However, this quickly became bittersweet to me, as I realised she was also putting physical distance between herself and Jesse by rolling away from her when she felt a violent impulse (6), or when she came close to revealing a part of her past and showing vulnerability (7).

What stood out to me in particular was how accustomed she has grown to being silenced. Even when Jesse shows empathy and willingness to comfort the narrator, the narrator shuts her out (7, 12). Perhaps the need for submission in silence is ingrained in her mind, given that at a young age she knew instinctively “if [she fought] back, they [would kill her]” (8). The closest she comes to fighting back in the story is loving someone of her own volition, whom is of a gender her abusive family would disapprove of. Even then, she keeps silent about her relationship, and refers to Jesse as “the woman [she] could not admit [she’d] been with”. (11) The recurring theme of the narrator being forcefully silenced by physical means (9), witnessing other members of her family refrain from speaking about acts of violence (8), and refusing to speak of her past trauma herself, was extremely heart-rending.