“The river of names”; is part of a collection of short stories in the book Trash published in 1988, written by Dorothy Allison. It is the basis for the subsequent novel Bastard out of Carolina. In her powerful writings, Allison draws on her harrowing childhood in 1950s Greenville, South Carolina: the stigma of being raised as a bastard, the shame and pride she felt about her family, and her association with her stepfather who beat and molested her. “In this story, “The River of Names”,; Allison writes about her life as a way to reckon with her past, honoring her attempt to transform her experience as a working-class lesbian addicted to violence, language and hope into contemporary literature.'; Her emotionally intense story, intertwined with poverty, incest and abuse, is ultimately a story of survival. Of all humanity's absurd assumptions about humanity, nothing surpasses most of the criticisms leveled at the habits of the poor by well-housed and well-off people. warm and well fed. - Herman Melville In today's society people are eager to categorize what they are unfamiliar with. They perceive poor people and people from the South as “white trash.” Of course, their socioeconomic background influences this perception. Allison comes from the backwoods of South Carolina and presents these people in a way that defies American audiences' expectations and at the same time does not romanticize their lives. The story is told by a narrator, who is unnamed, and her experiences while growing up in this type of family and follows all the stereotypical images that come to mind: "broken teeth, torn overalls and dirt."; He does not gloss over the ugliness of this poverty. His words are not simple, but concrete truths. Dorothy Allison speaks through this narrator with unwavering honesty about a world where pain and love intersect. “Stealing was a way to pass the time. Things we needed, things we didn't need, for the courage, the anger, the need. But sooner or later we all get caught. Then it was, “When will you learn?”; Allison's characters are based on her poor Southern family. He managed to escape the fate that destroyed so many generations of this family through his own shit… middle of paper… were the repeated words of how despicable he was in the eyes of his stepfather. This was instilled in her until she started to believe it and this was the greatest damage. Allison does not downplay incestuous acts but leaves out much of the graphic detail that some authors use to eroticize incest and family violence in victimization pornography. .. There is no description of the genitals, there is no description of the actual act of intercourse except from the perspective of a child being terribly hurt. It's the absence of gratuitous detail that shifts the focus to survival and consequences and not the unfortunate acts in his story. Allison's writing is characterized by a pronounced and sometimes painful passion for life. It is simple and never flashy, which gives it greater credibility. Every review I have read has discussed the element of truthfulness in Allison's words and this is rare. He writes with distance and displacement to convey these truths in a way that makes them real. His words burn in the mind, cleansing and wounding at the same time, and when he has finished the reader has experienced the truth.