Memorial Drive: A Daughter's Memoir

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 in this powerful true crime story 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 in this unforgettable family tragedy the 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, a powerful exploration of a mother-daughter relationship, and 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.

This powerful and unflinching memoir unearths:

• Grief and Loss: An intimate look at the unimaginable trauma of losing a mother at age nineteen and the profound experience of pain and loss that shaped the artist she became.
• A Southern Coming of Age: A searing account of a girlhood spent as a “child of miscegenation” in Mississippi, and the journey of a young poet finding her voice in the wake of tragedy.
• Racial Injustice: A piercing exploration of a mother’s life in the deeply segregated South and the enduring ripple effects of white racism on a family.
• Resilience and Survival: A testament to fierce love that moves from a harrowing 1985 crime on Atlanta’s Memorial Drive to a daughter’s reckoning with her family’s tragic history.