River Sing Me Home

Names form a motif in the novel that connects to the text’s theme of The Power of Memory. Examples of the power of names appear first when Mama B details how she got her name. As an inherited name—a “title” (17)—gained from her mother, Mama B’s background shows the value in naming as a way of passing down generational memories.

Rachel’s two names also serve a similar purpose. The dream mother addresses Rachel by “the name she was meant to have before some white man called her Rachel” (7), which highlights how slavery fragments ancestral memory. Although Rachel does not recognize the name, she owns it since it connects to something deep within her. However, her ownership of the name comes not from replacing the one given to her by white men but through her escape. The question of “who owns [her]” (81) no longer matters when Rachel, through her actions within the text, illustrates that she belongs to no enslaver.

The power of naming has its boundaries as demonstrated by Rachel’s pondering of the liberation village in Part 2. The village is unnamed, yet Rachel “[feels] its power” (204). The village does not have the same ostentatious titles that mimic the spaces of white dominance such as the plantations. Rachel briefly experiences safety while there. The lack of a name for this refuge highlights the way naming can be weaponized—and how this can be resisted—to prioritize some generational memories over others.

Although these plantations are traumatic vessels for Rachel and others, Shearer’s emphasis of these locations at the beginning and ending of the novel shows Rachel’s development as a character. Rachel flees Providence due to a dreamlike figure who commands her to. Yet, when Rachel escapes with Mercy from Perseverance, Rachel does so through sheer will. In this sense, the names of the plantations reflect Rachel’s characterization rather than the enslavers’ ego.

The text uses rivers as symbol for displaced people in the Caribbean. In turn, this symbolic use attaches to the theme of The Connection Between All Things. For example, once Rachel accepts that the Demerara River was neither “malign [or] benign—it simply existed” (187), she begins to understand Mama B’s philosophy. She identifies with the river, seeing it as a place where she can connect with forces beyond herself, including other people seeking safety in the Caribbean. Her experiences while traveling the Demerara lead her to view it as a metaphor for familial generations. Furthermore, when Rachel prays to the river’s water, she transforms it into a cosmic force, one that can grant life and liberation or death. By praying to it, Rachel repositions the river from a metaphor for family generations into an eternally bonding force connecting the Caribbean population.