Natasha Trethewey

Real Rating: 4.8* of five

The Publisher Says: An exquisite meditation on the geographies we inherit and the metaphors we inhabit, from Pulitzer Prize winner and nineteenth U.S. poet laureate Natasha Trethewey

In a shotgun house in Gulfport, Mississippi, at the crossroads of Highway 49, the legendary highway of the Blues, and Jefferson Street, Natasha Trethewey learned to read and write. Before the land was a crossroads, however, it was a a farming settlement where, after the Civil War, a group show more of formerly enslaved women, men, and children made a new home.

In this intimate and searching meditation, Trethewey revisits the geography of her childhood to trace the origins of her writing life, born of the need to create new metaphors to inhabit “so that my story would not be determined for me.” She recalls the markers of history and culture that dotted the horizons of her the Confederate flags proudly flown throughout Mississippi; her gradual understanding of her own identity as the child of a Black mother and a white father; and her grandmother’s collages lining the hallway, offering glimpses of the world as it could be. With the clarity of a prophet and the grace of a poet, Trethewey offers up a vision of writing as of our own lives and the stories of the vanished, forgotten, and erased.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Her mother sang her John Brown's Body as a means of soothing the Chernobyl-level burn of racism as the mixed-"race" (how I hate that we still use that horrible, divisive pseudoscientific calumny by default!) family drove past confederate battle flags! (Frequently, then, in her home state of Mississippi...it's on their state flag.) Now, how horrifying an image is that, when that damn dirge that starts with the words "John Brown's body lies a-moldering in the grave" is soothing?! This is the absolute most powerful statement of the horrors the convulsively dying Jim Crow system of the US South inflicted on people of color (another digression: This locution is deeply uncomfortable to white people like me who, in the 1960s, were loudly excoriated for calling African-Americans either "black" or "colored" in the South).

Returning to my scheduled review: Poet Trethewey was unique, then, from birth forward. She was the product of miscegenation (that horrifying term I'm glad I need to define) as her parents were not legally married in her home state until Loving v. Virginia was decided a year after she was born. Her Black matrilineal line was stuffed with women who had embodied what can only be called triumphs of the will, and all the merrier to say that when I know that this application of that phrase will horrify Nazi true believers. The influence of her poet/professor papa is no doubt there somewhere, but Poet Trethewey does not work on one cylinder, she fires on all of 'em.

I can imagine some astute observers wondering what the devil is going on here. Mudge HATES poetry!some are thinking. Some are quite correct. I loathe the experience of reading poetry the same way I loathe the experience of riding the bus. It's crammed with stuff I don't want to know about, it's uncomfortably tight to sit in and in no way offers me enough room or seats designed for my spatial dimensions, it sways and janks and judders over each crack in the road, and the air conditioning almost never works until it suddenly blasts January-on-the-Siberian-steppe gales for a few seconds.

That does not mean I am insensible to its influence on most people. I see it, I get it, I am not of that group but they are quite clearly expressing their approval. And, lest we lose sight of this, the book is Poet Trethewey's *writing about writing*; that is always interesting. As I suspect all good writing must be, the life led by the child-poet became the matter of the adult; in her experiences of racism, white supremacy, and Southern culture, she speaks with a voice that reaches deep into the National Conversation of the US as well as into the emotional cores of many, many, many people.

At under 100pp, this is an afternoon's read for me. It was a pleasure to read...if you've read Memorial Drive, her memoir, you'll know that Poet Trethewey is gifted in prose writing, and if you haven't what is wrong with you?!...and measures her life against her need to write, like a learner sounding out words in a new language. The essay is part of Yale University Press's terrific series of writerly essays. I have only one cavil to report. I felt the origin of the essay as a lecture rather more than I would have liked. I put it down to the poet's innate aurality of expression. I ended up needing to read passages aloud to understand what was being said, and that was also the only way I felt I *got* the Southernness of the Trethewey household. (This also got me very dark glowers from my roommate who is hostile to things literary.)

Hardly a sin, but for this reader a discomfort I could've done without. So can I recommend it to you? Absolutely, and I do. I think anyone interested in writers as entities who transmute life into Art, people intrigued by the shocking dichotomies of Southern culture, and women who batten on reading the success and happiness of their fellows, will all be especially gruntled. I hope men who wonder what hell the fuss about this poetry thing is will give it a read, too, as well as any and all people of color looking to gladden themselves on the success of their own. show less

An extremely personal account of violence, both the racial and gender sort, in one woman's life and the lingering effects. Trethewey's mother suffered through an abusive relationship, hers more physically abusive, while her daughter suffered severe emotional abuse at the hands of the same man. No matter that Trethewey's mother notified the police, and had a patrol officer in the area on the very day she was murdered. Trethewey recounts the fallout from her mother's murder and the fallout show more from existing as a bi-racial child in the south. She reconnects with her mother's ghost after the officer who was first on the scene gives her the case file years later, and works through her own identity at the same time. An Obama recommended book from 2020, and highly recommended by the Dawg. show less

*E-ARC received from Edelweiss Plus with the understanding that I would post an honest review. No money or other goods were exchanged, and all views are my own.*

Natasha Trethewey is one of my favorite poets, so when I saw she had written a memoir I was really excited to read it. This book, though short, packs a powerful punch as the author explores her relationship with her mother, piecing together events that led up to her mother's murder at the hands of her stepfather.

Fans of Trethewey's show more poetry may be aware of the outline of the story, and even those who don't will find out where the story is leading soon. This is a riveting book, reflective and raw, as Trethewey attempts to make sense - this time in prose - of a defining trauma in her life. Reading her memories, her gaps of memory, and transcripts from the trial, I was crying by the time I finished. This memoir touches on issues such as race and domestic abuse, all through the prism of a daughter's love for her mother. I'll be recommending it far and wide to my library patrons. show less

I am getting a head start on reading for National Poetry Month with this retrospective volume of Natasha Trethewey's poetry. She is one of my favorite poets, and I don't say that lightly, because I find most poetry makes the simple hard to understand merely by being in verse. Trethewey's poetry is not at all like that. Whether she's reflecting on history as in "Native Guard," delving into her personal history as in "Early Evening, Frankfort, Kentucky" or delving into artwork in one of her show more ekphrastic poems, she has a way of choosing just the right word of phrase to say precisely what she means in a way the reader understands, and occasionally taking one's breath away. Though I've read three of her collections so only some of the poems were truly new to me, they were nonetheless fresh and I occasionally had to reread a couple of times to just to let it fully sink in. A phenomenal collection I highly recommend to anyone. show less