Tags
American women poets, biography, family violence, mothers and daughters, Natasha D. Trethewey 1966-
Pulitzer Prize–winner Natasha Trethewey was U.S. Poet Laureate in 2012 and 2013. While this is a compelling memoir of her immutable love for her mother with whom she traveled down the same road of horrible outcome and of her delicate straddling of the white/black worlds they both shared, it’s her choice of words, her rhythm, her pacing through a “too-short” 211 pages that registers in the reader’s heart and mind. This makes it a superior read.
“Natasha Trethewey has composed a riveting memoir that reads like a detective story about her mother’s murder by a malevolent ex-husband. It reads with all the poise and clarity of Trethewey’s unforgettable poetry—heartrending without a trace of pathos, wise and smart at once, unforgettable. The short section her mother penned as she was trying to escape the marriage moved me to tears. I read the book in one gulp and expect to reread it more than once. A must-read classic.” (Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club; Cherry; and Lit)
“Beautifully composed, achingly sad…This profound story of the horrors of domestic abuse and a daughter’s eternal love for her mother will linger long after the book’s last page is turned.” (Publishers Weekly)
“In Memorial Drive, Natasha Trethewey has transformed unimaginable tragedy into a work of sublimity. There’s sorrow and heartbreak, yes, but also a beautiful portrait of a mother and her daughter’s enduring love. Trethewey writes elegantly, trenchantly, intimately as well about the fraught history of the south and what it means live at the intersection of America’s struggle between blackness and whiteness. And what, in our troubled republic, is a subject more evergreen?” (Mitchell S. Jackson, author of Survival Math)
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