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4.34 AVERAGE
4.34 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
This is a powerful and devastating account of domestic abuse, murder and a daughter's accounting and reclaiming of her mother's story. Throughout the first part of the book Trethewey speaks to her young self, retelling the story that has profoundly impacted and informed her life and work as a poet and writer. Her masterful telling is full of the longing and lost promise of the woman she shows as loving, strong and intelligent; so much more than the victim of an obsessive man and the systems of protection that failed her.
From the beginning of this memoir the reader is aware that the author's mother will be killed by her abusive husband when the author is 19 years old. We are then taken on the journey of the author's memories, from a time when she was very young, in Mississippi, living among relatives and with her parents' interracial marriage still intact, to her and her mother setting out for Atlanta and a new life, the two of them bonding as they drive to Atlanta listening to soul music together.
Natasha, the author, is writing the book in her middle years,, finally able to come to terms and revisit the past. She does so with beautifully written prose as well as an open heart. She is willing to share her pain with the reader, but never in a self-indulgent way. She does so as objectively as she can.
The mother, Gwen, is smart, beautiful, caring, and successful. Even so, she falls prey to an abuser, and stays with him for years, which changes everything for Natasha.
This is Gwen's story, as well as Natasha's, and it serves as a reminder that anyone can succumb to abuse, and that we all need to look out for one another.
While hard to read, I was riveted by this deeply moving story and kept rooting for Gwen to escape and have a happy ending.
Natasha, the author, is writing the book in her middle years,, finally able to come to terms and revisit the past. She does so with beautifully written prose as well as an open heart. She is willing to share her pain with the reader, but never in a self-indulgent way. She does so as objectively as she can.
The mother, Gwen, is smart, beautiful, caring, and successful. Even so, she falls prey to an abuser, and stays with him for years, which changes everything for Natasha.
This is Gwen's story, as well as Natasha's, and it serves as a reminder that anyone can succumb to abuse, and that we all need to look out for one another.
While hard to read, I was riveted by this deeply moving story and kept rooting for Gwen to escape and have a happy ending.
I picked up this book after listening to an interview with Natasha Trethewey on Fresh Air (in case anyone is interested https://www.npr.org/2020/07/28/896205843/poet-natasha-trethewey) and I read it over a long weekend away at the coast. This was both a compelling read and a very challenging read. Trethewey is a poet, her writing is beautiful, which makes this story that much more heartbreaking.
Trethewey spends a great deal of time bringing to life her early years growing up in the south, the child of a Black woman from Mississippi and white Canadian father, during a time when interracial marriage was far from accepted. Her father, a writer and professor, is absent much of the time and eventually her parents divorce, but he instills a love of learning and language in her. Her grandparent home is a constant in her life and she takes great care in bringing her time there with family to life, so much so we can almost hear the squeaky floorboards of this old house and see the curtains waving in the balmy evening breeze. And her mother, Gwen, is an ever-present force, a woman ahead of her time who values family and home and loves her daughter without question. Trethewey truly brings her mother to life.
Once single, her mother moves to Atlanta, where she earns a master’s degree and enjoys her new life and work in the city. Soon she meets someone, and somewhat surprisingly they marry, even though her family is not fully in support of the marriage. Here is where things take a dark turn.
Later, long after her mother’s murder at the hands of her step-father, Trethewey is in Atlanta and by chance runs into a former law enforcement officer who worked on her mother’s case. He provides Trethewey with case records, from a photo, which dredges up memories, to a chilling transcript of the recording of the conversation between her mother and her step-father in the days before her mother’s murder.
I read this book quickly, it’s a slim book, but there were some passages that I sat with for hours, setting the book down to hold back tears and sit with the weight of the story. It is a beautiful and painful story.
Trethewey spends a great deal of time bringing to life her early years growing up in the south, the child of a Black woman from Mississippi and white Canadian father, during a time when interracial marriage was far from accepted. Her father, a writer and professor, is absent much of the time and eventually her parents divorce, but he instills a love of learning and language in her. Her grandparent home is a constant in her life and she takes great care in bringing her time there with family to life, so much so we can almost hear the squeaky floorboards of this old house and see the curtains waving in the balmy evening breeze. And her mother, Gwen, is an ever-present force, a woman ahead of her time who values family and home and loves her daughter without question. Trethewey truly brings her mother to life.
Once single, her mother moves to Atlanta, where she earns a master’s degree and enjoys her new life and work in the city. Soon she meets someone, and somewhat surprisingly they marry, even though her family is not fully in support of the marriage. Here is where things take a dark turn.
Later, long after her mother’s murder at the hands of her step-father, Trethewey is in Atlanta and by chance runs into a former law enforcement officer who worked on her mother’s case. He provides Trethewey with case records, from a photo, which dredges up memories, to a chilling transcript of the recording of the conversation between her mother and her step-father in the days before her mother’s murder.
I read this book quickly, it’s a slim book, but there were some passages that I sat with for hours, setting the book down to hold back tears and sit with the weight of the story. It is a beautiful and painful story.
reflective
sad
fast-paced
4.5 stars. This was incredibly well curated in terms of plot strands. Trethewey is a very gifted writer, especially in her ability to gracefully observe metaphors in every day situations. A lot of this memoir was gutting to read, particularly the transcripts between her mother and the perpetrator. I think it was a really helpful read for shedding light on the complexities of domestic violence.
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
This is a devastating book, the writing is so well done but what's most important here is the heartbreaking story of domestic violence and the author's grappling with what happened to her childhood and her mother.
If you watched or listened to any of the Judge Amy Coney Barrett hearings, you were treated to GOP man after man congratulate the judge on being able to do laundry while being a judge. Something, strangely that Neil Gorsuch or Brett Kavanaugh had to answer. Both the questions, and Coney-Barrett’s answers, were a massive display of 1950s thinking at best. You would be excused for thinking that Coney-Barrett’s suitability for the position rested solely on her ability to hit the right buttons on the washer and to fold clothes.
What does this have to do with a gut wrenching book like Memorial Drive? Because those 1950s attitude about women and about race are still very much running around in 2020. Trethewey’s mother was murdered by her husband in part because of these attitudes. It is impossible to read this book and not think about that as well as works such as No Visible Bruises.
Or about the increase in spousal/partner abuse because of the pandemic.
Trethewey’s memoir must have been painful to write – not only because she had to remember, had to confront those memories of that time – of the abuse by her stepfather – but because she also reads the case transcripts. This includes her mother’s narrative, written shortly before her death, as well as the phone calls that her mother recorded, phone calls with her abusive husband.
In part, the book is not so much coming to term with what happened, but a mediation on everything it is, about what grief is. There is humanness, a rawness, a realness in this memoir. It is about grief but it is about how things carry on with us, the weight we carry.
It is a visceral indictment of how culture views women, in particular black women, and this is something that Trethewey’s mother’s own words give voice too – the letter, the letter she wrote is a rebuttal, a call out, a slap to all those, including those GOP men who asked about laundry, about how women are treated. Trethewey’s mother notes that when she entered the shelter, people considered her more capable because she had a degree, she had a job. And there is always, the questions that the relationship raises -why the marriage, why the secrecy, why, why. And these questions the author has as well. And wonders, looking at the possible answers to these questions, if the expectation and standards to which we hold women and the stereotypes that all women, but Black women in particular are subjected to , dictate some of Trethewey’s mother’s choices or restricted her choices. Those questions about laundry. Those questions about motherhood.
The fact that Trethewey had access to the information from her mother’s crime scene is a fluke, a rare event that occurred after a strange meeting during dinner. The materials, and the fact that they would have otherwise been destroyed, are so important.
Trethewey’s book may have come from her personal desire to reconnect, explore her past and the change that one traumatic event causes, but it provides as well, a blue print and indictment of how we view women. If the men asking about laundry were more concerned with actual violence against women, the Supreme Court would be better for it.
What does this have to do with a gut wrenching book like Memorial Drive? Because those 1950s attitude about women and about race are still very much running around in 2020. Trethewey’s mother was murdered by her husband in part because of these attitudes. It is impossible to read this book and not think about that as well as works such as No Visible Bruises.
Or about the increase in spousal/partner abuse because of the pandemic.
Trethewey’s memoir must have been painful to write – not only because she had to remember, had to confront those memories of that time – of the abuse by her stepfather – but because she also reads the case transcripts. This includes her mother’s narrative, written shortly before her death, as well as the phone calls that her mother recorded, phone calls with her abusive husband.
In part, the book is not so much coming to term with what happened, but a mediation on everything it is, about what grief is. There is humanness, a rawness, a realness in this memoir. It is about grief but it is about how things carry on with us, the weight we carry.
It is a visceral indictment of how culture views women, in particular black women, and this is something that Trethewey’s mother’s own words give voice too – the letter, the letter she wrote is a rebuttal, a call out, a slap to all those, including those GOP men who asked about laundry, about how women are treated. Trethewey’s mother notes that when she entered the shelter, people considered her more capable because she had a degree, she had a job. And there is always, the questions that the relationship raises -why the marriage, why the secrecy, why, why. And these questions the author has as well. And wonders, looking at the possible answers to these questions, if the expectation and standards to which we hold women and the stereotypes that all women, but Black women in particular are subjected to , dictate some of Trethewey’s mother’s choices or restricted her choices. Those questions about laundry. Those questions about motherhood.
The fact that Trethewey had access to the information from her mother’s crime scene is a fluke, a rare event that occurred after a strange meeting during dinner. The materials, and the fact that they would have otherwise been destroyed, are so important.
Trethewey’s book may have come from her personal desire to reconnect, explore her past and the change that one traumatic event causes, but it provides as well, a blue print and indictment of how we view women. If the men asking about laundry were more concerned with actual violence against women, the Supreme Court would be better for it.