Book Review: Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey

´They could have saved her´.

Puliter-winner and former US poet laureate Natasha Trethewey lost her mother as she was 19. Her mother was killed by her ex-husband, ´Big Joe´, a former Vietnam veteran with a recorded history of aggressivity and threats against her. There are even clear recordings, Trethewey went through 20 years later, where he explicitly stated more than once his desire to kill her. For instance: ´I want to take you with me if I have to go. And maybe in the next world we´ll still be together´. And many other explicit threats that were not taken seriously by the police and state authorities. Until it was too late.

A couple of days ago I was discussing with a friend about how indifferent people may be to relatively isolated yet direct threats against women: disclosure of privacy, harassment, doxxing. It is not so serious, don´t make such a fuss about it, live your life and don´t care...are only some of the ´wise advices´ one can receive in such situations, unfortunately also from other women.

Memorial Drive is the street where her mother lived before being killed. 20 years after, she is recollecting memories and documents describing the last months, weeks and days in the life of her mother, but also kind fragments of past happy episodes as a child in the company of her father or grandmother.

Her family defied the segregationist regulations at the time. Her father, Canadian emigrant Eric Trethewey, married her mother, Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough in Ohio, as in Mississippi mixed marriages were forbidden. In her birth certificate, Natasha was labeled as ´colored´. There is a whole chapter of American recent history written in her life.

The relationship with her mother does not need healing  - ´I wanted nothing more than to please my mother´ - , there is a gentleness and kindness between the two which contrasts with the violent encounters with ´Big Joe´. But there is trauma too, trauma of a daughter hearing her mother beaten and unable to intervene to save her. Trauma of being spared death by the stepfather in exchange of her mother´s life. The trauma of being permanently harassed by her stepfather but unable to articulate the situation to her mother.  

A work of memory collection, Memorial Drive is processing facts and police reports translating them into a poetic/literary realm. In addition to being a lyrical memoir, this book is also an eye-opening account of what happens when women´s life are not valued strong enough to stop men from murdering them - mentally or physically or both. A literary warning of our solidary responsibility.