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A review by xmusicxobsessed
Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir by Natasha Trethewey
4.0
When Natasha Trethewey was 19, her world shattered after her former stepfather killed her mother. Through this book, she delves into what built to this event and how it shaped her into the poet she would become. Trethewey goes back through her mother’s history and how her childhood years were as a mixed-race child in the South when her simple existence was enough to have the KKK at their door. Eventually, the story introduces her abusive stepfather who turns out to be the family’s biggest mistake. As Trethewey digs up memories she tried to bury long ago, the tragic tale of domestic violence, resistance, and ultimately grief begins.
I was captivated by this story from the start and stayed up reading it for several nights.
A Pulitzer-Prize winning poet, Trethewey's writing is thoughtful and moving. I felt her loss and grief lift off the pages. Trethewey lovingly portrays her mother as a strong and fierce woman whose life was full of hope and potential and when she was gone, I mourned her alongside Trethewey. I appreciated that the memoir did not try to claim that all the author’s memories are accurate. Often having a “perhaps” or “maybe” crafted into a sequence. Memoirs are not all factual. They are, but a person’s memories, prone to error. I also felt it played into the book’s overall theme of possibility. A lot of the book is Trethewey struggling with the aftermath of her mother’s death and going through all the “what if’s?” Were things fated to be this way? Or could she have traded places with her mother? As she goes through this she slowly tries to come to terms with her grief and find herself as an artist and as an adult. I would have liked to hear more about Natasha’s relationship to her brother and especially how that was affected after their mother’s death, but I loved the book regardless.
Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins Publishers/Ecco for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.
I was captivated by this story from the start and stayed up reading it for several nights.
A Pulitzer-Prize winning poet, Trethewey's writing is thoughtful and moving. I felt her loss and grief lift off the pages. Trethewey lovingly portrays her mother as a strong and fierce woman whose life was full of hope and potential and when she was gone, I mourned her alongside Trethewey. I appreciated that the memoir did not try to claim that all the author’s memories are accurate. Often having a “perhaps” or “maybe” crafted into a sequence. Memoirs are not all factual. They are, but a person’s memories, prone to error. I also felt it played into the book’s overall theme of possibility. A lot of the book is Trethewey struggling with the aftermath of her mother’s death and going through all the “what if’s?” Were things fated to be this way? Or could she have traded places with her mother? As she goes through this she slowly tries to come to terms with her grief and find herself as an artist and as an adult. I would have liked to hear more about Natasha’s relationship to her brother and especially how that was affected after their mother’s death, but I loved the book regardless.
Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Collins Publishers/Ecco for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.