Content warning: This story contains mentions of domestic violence.

English Prof. Natasha Trethewey discussed her 2020 book, “Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir,” at a Tuesday reading and discussion hosted by The Graduate School. 

This memoir details Trethewey’s experience growing up in a household with domestic violence, including her mother’s struggles to escape her stepfather’s abuse. Trethewey said educating the public about domestic violence is crucial to prevent abuse from occurring in the first place. 

“People are often guilty of all sorts of misconceptions and misperceptions about victims of domestic violence,” Trethewey said. 

Trethewey has authored five poetry collections, a nonfiction book and served as poet laureate of the United States for two terms. She is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received a number of fellowships from the the Academy of American Poets, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. 

In 2007, Trethewey won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her collection, “Native Guard,” which inspired a play that premiered on NU’s Chicago Campus this past fall. 

Seventh-year political science graduate student Kyle Jones, who attended the reading, said it’s “difficult to put into words” the themes of grief and domestic violence in the book.

“The song and the musicality that our guest today puts to these experiences — I think it really helps therapeutically,” Jones said.

Trethewey performed a reading of “Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir,” followed by a discussion and Q&A with TGS students. 

During the discussion, Trethewey recalled the moment she told her parents she was going to be a writer. Trethewey said her mother stood up to her stepfather, despite knowing the harm he would inflict on her.

“‘She will do whatever she wants,’” Trethewey recalled her mother saying to her stepfather. “The cost of silence was too great because she couldn’t let him destroy me, even as he was trying to destroy her.” 

Trethewey said her mother was eventually murdered by her stepfather. She said the best way to know her is to know her mother — and the best way to know her mother is to know her through the lens of her daughter, as referenced in the book’s title. 

The event was organized by the NU Presidential Fellows, including seventh-year Ph.D candidate in Spanish Alicia Nuñez. 

“We have a lot of resources on campus that we don’t talk about,” Nuñez said. “Especially with the climate of what’s happening not just on campus but in the larger Chicagoland area, we want to bring talks like this.” 

“Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir” won the 2021 Southern Book Prize in Nonfiction and was named a finalist for the 2021 Carnegie Medal in Nonfiction and a finalist for the 2021 Heartland Booksellers Award. The book was also a New York Times Notable Book in 2020 and a New York Times Critics’ Top-10 Best Book of 2020. 

Trethewey listed her father among her literary influences, saying she read his poetry from a young age. She also called the poet Seamus Heaney one of her favorite writers and said Rita Dove’s book, “Thomas and Beulah” was like “a Bible” for her when she was working on her first book. 

“(Literature) tells you something about yourself. It’s the mirror you look into and learn about your own humanity and the human condition,” Trethewey said. “Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote, ‘Poetry is the mirror that makes beautiful that which is distorted.’ That’s what literature does. It can make beautiful, even the most distorted things.”

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Twitter: @andresbuena01

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