Reviews with content warning for Domestic abuse - Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir

A beautiful, thoughtful and reflective memoir about the nature of memory itself: what it means to remember and forger, how creating narratives helps us survive, and how someone's absence can shape our life.

It deals with difficult topics: the author's mother was murdered by her ex-stepfather when she was only 19. This memoir is her trying to make sense of the event and her life before and after. She was also a biracial girl born when interracial marriage was still illegal in Mississippi, which also shapes her childhood in sometimes violent ways.

Trethewey does not flinch from the ugliest parts of humanity, but she treats them with compassion and nuance. She's a poet and it shows in the beauty of her language, the rhythm of the narrative and the sensitivity of her perspective.

This was a hard book to read but so worth it.

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thewellreadmrs's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad medium-paced

4.25

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ehmannky's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0

Trethewey uses this book to explore the winding path of her childhood to her mother's murder at the hands of an abusive ex-husband. It's a heavy book, dealing heavily with spousal abuse and grief. Trethewey explores these relationships in innovative and poetic ways. I did not love the word-for-word translation of her mother's and stepfather's phone calls, but other than that everything was heartbreaking to read.

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waytoomanybooks's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.5

It’s so hard reading memoirs where someone is going through something so challenging and so painful because all I want to do is step in and do something. Or I say, “Don’t do that! Do this!” As if “this” is easy. As if “this” is obvious. As if “this” is even something I would or could do myself. It’s a painful reminder that we don’t always or often see the big picture when we’re in the middle of it. That we could go through this exact same painful experience and get the exact same painful result. That maybe we’re not as smart, as brave, as strong as we’d like to think. What makes a memoir memorable are the ones ones that plumb the depths of human emotion and endurance, that wring you out, that make you have to get up and walk around before going back to the material. I think people write memoirs to remind the authors themselves and the readers of their shared humanity. The author is exposing their soul, and they’re asking their readers to help them take care of it. This is just such a memoir.

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shelbitedeschi's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad fast-paced

4.0

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