Memorial Drive by Natasha Trethewey is a memoir about race, domestic violence, murder, grief, trauma, family and memory.

This isn't the sort of book where, on reading the description, you'd expect this to be a compelling, in-one-sitting read. However, Tretheway's work as US Poet Laureate was the main reason I was interested in reading this. This memoir is a beautifully written excavation of trauma and childhood, of the ways in which you can revisit your history and your pain.

Tretheway's style lends itself perfectly to crafted and considered creative non-fiction. The recurring dream of her mother gaining in resonance throughout the book is an effective motif, grounding the reader in the fact that at its heart this is very much about the relationship between a mother and daughter.

The book's examination of domestic abuse is extremely powerful, loathe though I am to use such a dull word. Without giving too much away, including the transcripts at the end of the book is some of the most effective, exposing work I've read in years about the ways in which abusers operate in almost a parallel world, unable to imagine themselves as responsible for their actions and holding those they hurt accountable. In the same way that Carmen Maria Machado's In the Dream House holds up a mirror to the shattered and fragmented experiences of being a survivor of domestic abuse, this offers testimony and witness both to the abuse itself, and ultimately to the failures of a system unable to protect victims.

Tretheway accomplishes this with enormous empathy and clarity, in what is clear is an extremely difficult work of remembrance to have written. I really hope this reaches a wide readership as it's extremely readable and honest, without ever losing sight of the ways in which these traumas shape lives.

Subtitled “A Daughter’s Memoir” this is an account which needed to be shared by ex US Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winning Natasha Trethewey. In 1985, when Natasha was nineteen her mother, Gwen Grimmette, was murdered by her ex-husband after ten years of domestic abuse and a period of extremely chilling stalking and threats.
This is Natasha’s attempts to both celebrate her mother and come to terms with her demise. Towards the end she states: “The whole time I have been working to tell this story, I have done so incrementally, parsing it so that I could bear it; neat, compartmentalized segments that have allowed me to carry on these three decades without falling apart.” This is also the approach she takes in her writing of it, a not totally chronological account which moves from dreams to observations to moments of their lives but at the backbone there is a story of a girl brought up in Mississippi, a mixed race child, loved by her mother’s family with whom she lives amongst with her white Canadian University Professor father gradually drifting away from her.
In the early 1970’s Mum makes a break from the supportive family and moves to Atlanta where she meets the wrong guy. Part of the account is a physical revisiting thirty years after the event, there’s a fascinating visit to a medium and a chance encounter which leads Trethewey to possessing the case notes.
Throughout the work there is the inevitable build-up to the murder, brought home shockingly for the reader through complete transcriptions of telephone calls. The police were monitoring the situation aware of the step-father’s threats but acted too slowly to save her mum.
The sense of loss and ongoing pain is evident throughout and any real sense of celebration of her mother’s life is dampened by her eventual fate. There’s an extraordinary calmness which both distances the reader from the events and drives them on through the text. It is a hauntingly tragic read but it is ultimately inspiring in the author’s quest to move on some way from this inexplicable crime.