many rivers to cross

            
             The story I chose to write about for this essay is "Many Rivers to Cross" by June Jordan. This story seemed like it was once a book, but they shortened it down. There was a lot of information in just five or six pages, so it was sort of tough to keep up with. Just like most of the pieces of literature in this book it was sad. This one seemed to me to be even extra sad in a sense. The title of the story I think is a great title that describes the story very well. The daughter in the story does have many rivers to cross. She isn't only the mother of an eighteen year old, but her mom died and her dad I think it a lunatic. She has many things to put up with in the story.
             "Many Rivers to Cross" is about a daughter that is struggling to financially support her son and herself. She goes to visit her mom and dad one day at their house he found out something tragic had happened. Her father was a mess and told her that he thinks her mom is dead. She had a normal reaction to what most people would say to someone. "What do you mean you think she's dead"? He said he didn't know and was a coward, and made his own daughter see if his wife was dead or not. The wife ended up being dead, which was caused by suicide, I think. The father was then being a jerk, and started talking about money. He said the money is mine and not yours until I die, to his own daughter. His daughter never even said anything about wanting the money in the first place.
             The part of the story that really confused me was how the father was acting when he found out his wife was dead. He didn't want to see if his own wife was dead or not, so he made is daughter look which I thought was pretty ignorant. Why would you want to hurt your daughter and make her look at her dead mother, rather then doing it yourself? I know that if I was married, and I thought my wife was dead I would definitely want to know for sure, and I wouldn't be a coward about it like he was.