Native Guard Summary
Natasha Trethewey

Native Guard Overview

Native Guard, by Natasha Trethewey, is a collection of poetry that combines elegy, confession, and historical exploration as a means of confronting concepts of identity and race. With a focus on Mississippi, past and present, as a cultural and political landscape, Trethewey examines the ways in which the region's history, including that of the Native Guard, the first black regiment who fought in the Civil War, informs personal experience and sense of self. The book addresses themes such as the intersection between history and the self, writing as an act of preservation, journey as discovery, body language, and the fluidity of identity.