An Instant New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book One of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2020Named 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 InStyleA chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at … 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.
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Really touching story. Beautifully written.
A beautifully written and very sad memoir that will have you all the way through, as the author recounts the short life she had with her mother and the lead up to and actual murder that ended it. The language is definitely shaped by the poetry the writer typically writes. The storytelling is exceptional and makes me wonder if a novel is in the author’s future. You will either feel the actual transcripts of the recorded evidence at the end either compound the horror or are redundant. I fall into the latter category but opinions differ.
Such a tragic story – amazing that the author was able to overcome.
Lovely writing. Heartbreaking.
“Do you know what it means to have a wound that never heals?”
Trigger: child abuse and domestic trauma
Natasha Trethewey. 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry winner, has written a beautifully personal look back on her life as the mixed race child of miscegenation and stresses that brought on her and her parents. At times, extremely uncomfortable, it has the personal touch that makes it unforgettable.
I loved this book! I read it in one day! It is a lyrical take on a very ugly part of our world: Childhood Trauma. The only drawback was the last section with the transcript which I didn’t think was really necessary even if it does “close the loop”. I am sure it will remain on my shelf and I will recommend it for a long time. Highly Recommended 5/5
This is an American story with an all-too familiar plot. A woman endures years of physical and psychological abuse at the hands of her intimate partner, who eventually murders her. What makes Memorial Drive memorable is its storyteller. This heart-breaking story is told from the recollections of the victim’s adult daughter from the time she was a young girl in elementary school to young adulthood. The reader is able to peer into the heart of the mother-victim through diaries and police transcripts, but the most haunting messages are from the grieving and keenly observant surviving daughter. The writing is first rate and reminds us how these kinds of family tragedies occur in horrifyingly slow motion.
Heartbreaking memoir of a daughter recounting life with her mother, father, and stepfather – the man who would kill her mother.
The writing is raw and the sadness is palpable.
Joel, Natasha’s stepfather, was abusive, and although Gwen, Natasha’s mother, reported the abuse to the police, they neglected their duty the day she was killed. Natasha writes this memoir 30 years after the death of her mother, and her emotions and guilt over her mother’s death are laid bare.
#MemorialDrive #NatashaTrethewey
Rarely does a book leave me breathless. Trethewey has produced an emotionally charged memoir that I will not soon forget. There are no secrets here – Trethewey, who grew up in the south, is the daughter of a biracial couple. Her mother was murdered when the author was nineteen by her disturbed, abusive second husband. It is a tale of loss and racial divisions and womanhood, infused with the richness of gut-honest, lyrical writing.