That's Not My Name

Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to murder, violence, kidnapping, child abuse, and police harassment.

That’s Not My Name uses Madison’s characterization and plotline to demonstrate that memories are central to a person’s sense of self. While all of the chapters told from Drew’s first-person perspective are titled “Drew,” the chapters told from Madison’s first-person perspective are not all titled “Madison.” At first, they are titled “Girl,” and later they are titled “Mary.” Only Chapter 29, Madison’s final chapter, bears her real name. This reflects the role that memory plays in forming her sense of herself: Immediately after she wakes in the ditch, her amnesia means she knows herself only as a “girl,” with no name, no past, no clear identity. Then Wayne tells her that her name is Mary, and she begins struggling to construct an identity around this name. It is only after her memories return that she is confident enough to reject the “Mary Boone” identity and think of herself accurately, as “Madison.”

On her first night at the cabin, she cries herself to sleep, trying to reconcile herself to her supposed identity as Mary Boone. She feels “exposed without [her] memories, unsafe in a world where she cannot even “own [her] name or [her] face” (55).