Reaction to "Nineteen-Thirty Seven" by Edwidge Danticat

     This short story stuck out to me when I read the first four short stories in Krick?Krack.  I believed the title Nineteen-Thirty Seven is representing a date in time that was very important to the characters in the story.  I did some research and found that the massacre that is mentioned throughout this short story had happened that year.  The character and her mother had a strong connection to this event.  She talked about how her mother had escaped the massacre by crossing the river but her mother was massacred and thrown in the river.  The main character and her mother returned to that river every year with many others who were family of the deceased during that horrible event.  "My mother would hold my hand tightly as we walked toward the water.  We were all daughters of that river, which had taken our mothers from us."  This sentence the author wrote displays the connection that these women have with this river and with each other.
     In the story her mother is in prison for witchcraft.  She is hungry and starved and the main character can't bring herself to talk to her mother, but you can tell she has such a connection with her that they understand each other even if she doesn't speak.  The main character brings a madonna with her when she visits her mother because it has shed a tear.  She was afraid her mother had passed away.  This is obviously something that her, her mother, and others use as some kind of fortune telling device.  It may even foreshadow her mothers death later in the story.
     At the end of the story she runs into a woman who tells her that she is a daughter of the river.  She knows that the main character's mother had passed away and is willing to take her there to mourn and collect her things.  This shows the connection that all these women had that one could tell that something was amiss with another.  Maybe another madonna in the story?  They both are signs of her mother's passing.
    A question that comes up towards the end of the story is when the main character asks the question:  Could her mother fly?  Did her mother know how to fly?  The answer she recieves is that in death she is flying to a better place.  This story holds so much symbolism and connection.  It was an interesting read and fun to connect everything together.