Natasha Trethewey - Memorial Drive Virtual Event
At age nineteen, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. In her new memoir, “Memorial Drive,” the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became.
The Atlanta History Center welcomes Natasha Trethewey for a virtual discussion on Tuesday, August 4, 2020, at 7:00 PM. This event is free and open to the public. Join the discussion via the link below.
A Cappella Books will have a limited number of signed copies of “Memorial Drive” available after the event. Pre-order ASAP via the link below to reserve your signed edition. At checkout, choose between the local delivery, curbside pick-up, or shipping options. For zip codes not listed in the above banner, select curbside pick-up or USPS shipping.
About the Book
With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, 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.
About the Author
Natasha Trethewey is a former US poet laureate and the author of five collections of poetry, as well as a book of creative nonfiction. She is currently the Board of Trustees Professor of English at Northwestern University. In 2007 she won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her collection “Native Guard.”
