Natasha Trethewey

The author is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former U.S. Poet Laureate who has published five collections of poems. Memorial Drive is a memoir about the early years of Trethewey's life and the murder of her mother, Gwendolyn Turnbough.

Natasha Trethewey was born in 1966 in Gulfport, Mississippi to a Black mother and a white father, Eric Trethewey. Her parents divorced when she was six years old and she moved to Atlanta with her mother. Shortly thereafter, Gwendolyn met and married Joel Grimmette. Throughout the memoir, Trethewey writes about her feelings of grief, anger, guilt, and even redemption as she reckons with the abuse inflicted by Joel. As a poet, she is prone to using symbols, metaphors, and stark imagery in her writing, creating a vivid picture of the violence and the fear of these tumultuous years and explaining poignantly how she has failed to reckon honestly with...