Dorothy Allison "River of Names"

When I read the excerpt "River of Names" from Dorothy Allison "Trash" for the first time, I was a bit confused. So later I reread it one more time and decided to read the bio of the author. Something seemed quite strange to me, as the excerpt contained, in my opinion, something that only the person who experienced similar things before in his/her life could describe so in details. 

Appeared I was right. 

Dorothy Allison grew up in poverty and was molested by her stepfather at the early age. Even though by the age of 11, her mother knew about, later in her life her stepfather kept sexually abusing her. She conducted a gonorrhea from him  and by the age of 20 it appeared, she could not have children.

So putting the pieces of the puzzle together, I could suggest that this is exactly what she is writing about in "River of Names". It is a story of survival, going through dealing with health issues and poverty. Even though the narrator is present in the story, we never hear her name. But we could assume that she is lesbian as her partner is another women. So does Dorothy Allison. This topic is very close to her heart and appears to be one of the subjects of her works. We might as well suggest that the narrator of the story is Dorothy Allison herself as she like a main hero are unable to have children. But at the very end we found out that the narrator had a person she was in love with. That person had a fairy-tale life, "that soft-chinned innocence" that gave the contrast to the excerpt. Comparison of life in poverty and life as a fairy tale. 

As well the narrator came out as a bastard. She was brought up by them and lived among them.

The name of the short stories is "Trash". Why trash? Well Dorothy was coming out of the family of so-called "white trash" which derives  form the word used as a racial slur against poor people from the South. That is exactly where the author grew up: in South Carolina.

The excerpt gets the title "River of Names" as there are many more members of the mentioned family. I think she uses here the metaphor "river" as river itself does flew in one direction, it has its beginning and its end and its derivatives so does a family unit. 

I think Allison uses particular words as "classically ugly healthy little boy", "infinitely fragile" to express her tone and point of view of the kids that getting born from "bastards." How fragile they in the beginning and who they are turned out to be.

Overall I liked the excerpt. It makes you think, getting into the details of writing, where the author hiding some parts and we, as readers, are going on a traveling adventure of discovering them.