"River of Names" Narrator

The narrator of "River of Names" is one of many cousins in a large family. She and her cousins had brutal childhoods during which many were raped by older relatives or assailants. Many of their relatives died, too. As an adult, she looks at a picture of herself with all of her cousins and struggles to remember who they were -- and who she was herself. As an adult, the narrator struggles with survivor's guilt, having made it out of her childhood alive. She wonders what she should do to make up for her survival; if there is something she needs to do to justify her continued existence.

Instead of dealing with her survivor's guilt, the narrator transforms her traumatic childhood experiences into funny or sentimental stories to tell her girlfriend, Jesse, and friends. While her watering down of her childhood stories make them easier...