Memorial Drive

A Daughter's Memoir

By: Natasha Trethewey

Narrated by: Natasha Trethewey

An Instant New York Times Bestseller

A New York Times Notable Book

One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by: The Washington Post, NPR, Shelf Awareness, Esquire, Electric Literature, Slate, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and InStyle

A chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather, and the moving, intimate story of a poet coming into her own in the wake of a tragedy

At age nineteen, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became.

With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Pulitzer Prize–winning poet 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.

Beautiful account of a common loss

America has lost too many women to domestic violence. In Georgia, where much of this book takes place, nearly 1,400 victims have been killed in DV incidents in the last 10 years alone. This beautiful book adeptly tells a story that is likely very similar to what each of those victims experienced, and holds a mirror to not only their surviving family members but to anyone who has lost someone close to them. The author gives us a gift by sharing her experiences, her voice, and her poetic interpretation of life post-loss in a way that crosses beyond cause. This book is lovely in so many ways and I highly recommend it.

Beautifully written and narrated by the author

I chose this book based on a recommendation from a friend and because I live very close to the Memorial Drive of the title.
I wasn’t expecting such lyrical prose. The story was heart-breaking, but the writing was beautiful. Highly recommended.

Voice too breathy!

The book was beautifully written but I found the narration distracting. Another author who shouldn’t narrate her own book!

Well written

What an excellent story Natasha needs to write more stories. The way she structured the story was a masterpiece

Emotional

A true depiction of domestic violence through the eyes of child. Emotional and sad.