Memorial Drive
by Natasha Trethewey
Buy on AmazonA chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather, and the moving, intimate story of a poet coming into her own in the wake of a tragedy At age nineteen, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became.…
Recommended by
"In Memorial Drive, Natasha Trethewey’s achingly beautiful memoir, the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet reflects upon the trauma of her youth while unearthing the legacy of women in her family. Here is the full range of Trethewey’s brilliance: her soft nuance, depth of looking and her shimmering constructions of language and imagery. “All my adult life I have lived with the guilt that I am implicated in my mother’s death – or, more precisely that she is dead because I am not,” writes Tretheway, whose life turns upon this moment when her abusive stepfather came to the teenage Tretheway’s school to kill her and then decided to kill her mother instead."
NPR Books We Love — 2020 · apps.npr.org
"Want to also reread Natasha Trethewey's "Memorial Drive," which I read some time ago in galley."
By the Book: Sarah Broom · nytimes.com