Crosses, Graveyards and Blood Memory: The Historical Re-Inscriptions of Natasha Trethewey (2012)

Undergraduates: Carlie Sorosiak, Carlie Sorosiak

Faculty Advisor: Joy Kasson
Department: American Studies

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Native Guard (2006), Natasha Trethewey’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book of poems, begins with an epigraph by Charles Wright, who equates memory to a cemetery “everywhere underfoot.” This idea guided my research – as Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” Through careful study of Native Guard (2006), Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002) and Domestic Work (2000), I examined how Trethewey grapples with her mixed-race identity and attempts to recover marginalized and forgotten histories, the stories of people “erased,” left out and “buried.” She focuses especially on her mother, who was brutally murdered, and how her mother’s life represents a previously-untold and semi-forgotten narrative. Like a tender of graves, Trethewey writes poetry that keeps alive the memories of the past.