THIS IS TRETHEWEY'S second book of prose, I think. I have not read the first, Beyond Katrina, but I did read one of the Virginia Quarterly Review essays that became part of it, and the tone I remember from that essay--clarity, precision, emotional restraint that had the effect of heightening the piece's emotion--carries over into this book, about another disaster, a more personal one.
Trethewey's parents had an interracial marriage, undertaken in the heady days of the civil rights movement, but they divorced when she was just six. Gwen, Trethewey's mother, remarried, but her new husband had some serious issues--controlling, jealous, violent. In Trethewey's first year of college, Gwen initiated a separation; shortly afterward, her estranged husband murdered her.
These same events constitute the background of much of Native Guard, Trethewey's Pulitzer-winning poetry collection from 2006. As a teacher, I found it hard not to think of how interesting it would be to teach them together, as a vivid instance of how the same experiences land differently when written as poetry and written as prose.
The book can certainly stand alone, though. As I mentioned earlier, my main impression is of restraint. The horror and pain of these events obviously need no heightening, and Trethewey's dry, bare bones account paradoxically makes that pain and horror all the starker.
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