Natasha Trethewey

The Pulitzer Prize-winning "Native Guard" explored Natasha Trethewey's relationship with her black mother. Her new collection of poems, "Thrall, "takes on the uneasy relationship between Trethewey and her white father. It charts the intersections of public and personal history that determine the roles to which a mixed-race daughter and her white father are consigned.

Poems

Thrall

Natasha D. Trethewey

Collects the author's poems as she reflects on her own interracial ancestry, her estrangement from her father, and their place in the history of race in America.

Christine Liu

I never enjoyed the act of reading poetry when I had to do it for literature classes. A poem requires too much attention; there's too many things to think about if you want to get to the core if its meaning. But I always liked the state of having read really good poetry - the feeling at the end after you've excavated all the lines of a poem for meter, sound, imagery, and metaphor, and the world hidden within its depths have been illuminated to you. This collection of poems by Natasha Trethewey is beautifully composed and endlessly evocative. Her poems deal with her biracial identity, her relationships with her parents, art, and the history of America seen through the lens of race. There are plenty of references and allusions to be mined, but doing the work of reading these poems is so rewarding.

Thrall Poems

Reviews