Native Guard (enhanced audio edition)

Native Guard (enhanced audio edition) Poems

Included in this audio-enhanced edition are recordings of the U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey reading Native Guard in its entirety, as well as an interview with the poet from the HMH podcast The Poetic Voice, in which she recounts what it was like to grow up in the South as the daughter of a white father and a black mother and describes other influences that inspired the work. Experience this Pulitzer Prize–winning collection in an engaging new way. Growing up in the Deep South, Natasha Trethewey was never told that in her hometown of Gulfport, Mississippi, black soldiers had played a pivotal role in the Civil War. Off the coast, on Ship Island, stood a fort that had once been a Union prison housing Confederate captives. Protecting the fort was the second regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards -- one of the Union's first official black units. Trethewey's new book of poems pays homage to the soldiers who served and whose voices have echoed through her own life. The title poem imagines the life of a former slave stationed at the fort, who is charged with writing letters home for the illiterate or invalid POWs and his fellow soldiers. Just as he becomes the guard of Ship Island's memory, so Trethewey recalls her own childhood as the daughter of a black woman and a white man. Her parents' marriage was still illegal in 1966 Mississippi. The racial legacy of the Civil War echoes through elegiac poems that honor her own mother and the forgotten history of her native South. Native Guard is haunted by the intersection of national and personal experience.
Sign up to use

Reviews

Photo of Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Vaughan@sarahlee1164
5 stars
Feb 17, 2022
Photo of Amar
Amar@amar
4 stars
Aug 13, 2022
Photo of Ana Hein
Ana Hein@anahein99
3 stars
Jan 5, 2023
Photo of Gisela Ayala
Gisela Ayala @giselasmusings
3 stars
Sep 7, 2022
Photo of Emily Netherland
Emily Netherland@eloquentemily
4 stars
Feb 6, 2022
Photo of Olivia Kersten
Olivia Kersten @livkersten
5 stars
Feb 6, 2022
Photo of Tori W.
Tori W.@vanillie
3 stars
Jan 14, 2022
Photo of Emily Perkovich
Emily Perkovich@undermeyou
5 stars
Nov 22, 2021
Photo of Neva Davies
Neva Davies@booksofunknownorigin
5 stars
Nov 18, 2021
Photo of Kyra Ann Dawkins
Kyra Ann Dawkins@kyra_ann_writes
5 stars
Nov 2, 2021
Photo of Ezra Alie
Ezra Alie@ezraa
5 stars
Oct 1, 2021
Photo of Abigail F
Abigail F@collapsinglibrary
4 stars
Sep 29, 2021
Photo of Cecilia Giordano
Cecilia Giordano@ccgio0987
5 stars
Sep 24, 2021

Highlights

Photo of Amar
Amar@amar
Page 38
Photo of Amar
Amar@amar
Page 28
Photo of Amar
Amar@amar
Page 24
Photo of Amar
Amar@amar
Page 8
Photo of Amar
Amar@amar
Page 1