Natasha Trethewey

A Daughter's Memoir

Memorial Drive

A 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. With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey explores this profound experience of pain, loss, and grief as an entry point into understanding the tragic course of her mother's life and the way her own life has been shaped by a legacy of fierce love and resilience. Moving through her mother's history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a "child of miscegenation" in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement in the lead-up to the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985. Memorial Drive is a compelling and searching look at a shared human experience of sudden loss and absence but also a piercing glimpse at the enduring ripple effects of white racism and domestic abuse. Animated by unforgettable prose and inflected by a poet's attention to language, this is a luminous, urgent, and visceral memoir from one of our most important contemporary writers and thinkers.

lae🌀

I walk around the room as in a trance, touching things on my shelves, moving books around on my desk, as if the objects, in their proper places, could realign the world.

Look at you. Even now you think you can write yourself away from that girl you were, distance yourself in the second person, as if you weren’t the one to whom any of this happened.

a daring telling of tragedy, trauma, daughterhood, survival, and memory. if tretheway endeavoured to write a swallowing story of her and her mother's lives, she did it. memorial drive manages narration of tragedy masterfully—there's no dramatisation for the sake of dramatisation, just the absurdities of life written as it happened (or more accurately, remembered); only the villain the villain, everyone else spared of blame or resentment. I found the passages on trauma and memory particularly compelling (and difficult), so many moments where I was just thinking, yes, exactly, just like this. there's not much I can or want to say about this memoir—I started reading this text as craft study, but had to engage with it (even this review) from a distance. too much too close. god, it's so hard, there are so many reasons writing and telling the stories we do are complete necessities

biddy

Jess Frees

Abby Byers

This book completely destroyed me. My heart was ripped out and shattered multiple times. 
The transcripts of the phone conversations between Gwen and Joel are maybe the most haunting part of this book.

Jennifer Dieter

Memorial Drive is a memoir unlike any memoir I've read. You know from the beginning that Trethewey's mother was murdered, but Memorial Drive has a tension and suspense that will make it impossible to set down (especially when you get to part II). It's not an easy read, especially if you struggle with stories about domestic violence. The story is tragic and heartbreaking, and when I read the last page, I needed to sit with my thoughts and emotions for a bit. 

While there are no provided images other than the one on the cover, Trethewey writes in such a visual way that I could easily imagine referenced photographs and scenes as I read. One scene that sticks out is a description of her mother dancing between people that she then compares to her casket being carried by pallbearers at her funeral. 

Even if memoir isn't your typical go-to genre, I suggest giving Memorial Drive a try since it doesn't fit into what I typically see in this genre.

Charlotte Rayfield

4.5 stars! A truly heart wrenching and harrowing tale that feels almost like a train wreck. You know what’s coming and it’s terrifying but you can’t stop it. All at once a memoir, a beautifully crafted diary, filled with mythology and somehow is fast, hurtling the reader toward the ending, which must have felt so slow in real life.

Siewling Seet

Charlene Jackson

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2020 WINNER OF THE ANISFIELD-WOLF BOOK AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 CARNEGIE MEDAL IN NON-FICTION 'This will be read for many, many years to come as a classic not just of the memoir genre but of contemporary writing' Simon Schama 'The work of a poet. A great poet' Financial Times 'A must-read classic' Mary Karr '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 Natasha Trethewey was born in Mississippi in the 60s to a black mother and a white father. When she was six, Natasha's parents divorced, and she and her mother moved to Atlanta. There, her mother met the man who would become her second husband, and Natasha's stepfather. While she was still a child, Natasha decided that she would not tell her mother about what her stepfather did when she was not there: the quiet bullying and control, the games of cat and mouse. Her mother kept her own secrets, secrets that grew harder to hide as Natasha came of age. When Natasha was nineteen and away at college, her stepfather shot her mother dead on the driveway outside their home. With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Memorial Drive is a compelling and searching look at a shared human experience of sudden loss and absence, and a piercing glimpse at the enduring ripple effects of white racism and domestic abuse. Luminous, urgent, and visceral, it cements Trethewey's position as one of the most important voices in America today.

Francine Corry

bethany edwards 

'A meditation on race, and class, and grief ... Uplifting, but just wrenching' BARACK OBAMA ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2020 AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE ANISFIELD-WOLF BOOK AWARD SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 CARNEGIE MEDAL IN NON-FICTION 'This will be read for many, many years to come as a classic not just of the memoir genre but of contemporary writing' Simon Schama 'Astonishing' Thandiwe Newton 'As gripping as any thriller' Mail on Sunday 'A masterpiece' Elizabeth Gilbert 'Powerful' The Times At age nineteen, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Heartbreakingly clear-eyed and tender, Memorial Drive is a daughter's act of love – and an unflinching excavation of the wounds that never heal. For as Trethewey tells her story, and reclaims her mother's, she lays bare the indelible scars of slavery and racism on the soul of a troubled nation. 'Sheer artistry ... Trethewey's masterpiece suggests that the greatest act of defiance a black person can do is to remember' Financial Times

Elizabeth Jones

Jorge Amigo

Hannah Yoon

An Instant New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020 Named One of the Best Books of the Year by: The Washington Post, NPR, Shelf Awareness, Esquire, Electric Literature, Slate, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and InStyle A 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. With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Natasha Trethewey explores this profound experience of pain, loss, and grief as an entry point into understanding the tragic course of her mother’s life and the way her own life has been shaped by a legacy of fierce love and resilience. Moving through her mother’s history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a “child of miscegenation” in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement in the lead-up to the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985. Memorial Drive is a compelling and searching look at a shared human experience of sudden loss and absence but also a piercing glimpse at the enduring ripple effects of white racism and domestic abuse. Animated by unforgettable prose and inflected by a poet’s attention to language, this is a luminous, urgent, and visceral memoir from one of our most important contemporary writers and thinkers.

Memorial Drive A Daughter's Memoir

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