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Native Guard gift edition
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Native Guard gift edition Trade cloth - 2007

by Natasha Trethewey

Growing up in the Deep South, Natasha Trethewey was never told that in her hometown of Gulfport, Mississippi, black soldiers had played a pivotal role in the Civil War. Off the coast, on Ship Island, stood a fort that had once been a Union prison housing Confederate captives. Protecting the fort was the second regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards -- one of the Union's first official black units. Trethewey's new book of poems pays homage to the soldiers who served and whose voices have echoed through her own life.

The title poem imagines the life of a former slave stationed at the fort, who is charged with writing letters home for the illiterate or invalid POWs and his fellow soldiers. Just as he becomes the guard of Ship Island's memory, so Trethewey recalls her own childhood as the daughter of a black woman and a white man. Her parents' marriage was still illegal in 1966 Mississippi. The racial legacy of the Civil War echoes through elegiac poems that honor her own mother and the forgotten history of her native South. Native Guard is haunted by the intersection of national and personal experience.


Summary

Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Natasha Trethewey’s elegiac Native Guard is a deeply personal volume that brings together two legacies of the Deep South.

The title of the collection refers to the Mississippi Native Guards, a black regiment whose role in the Civil War has been largely overlooked by history. As a child in Gulfport, Mississippi, in the 1960s, Trethewey could gaze across the water to the fort on Ship Island where Confederate captives once were guarded by black soldiers serving the Union cause. The racial legacy of the South touched Trethewey’s life on a much more immediate level, too. Many of the poems in Native Guard pay loving tribute to her mother, whose marriage to a white man was illegal in her native Mississippi in the 1960s. Years after her mother’s tragic death, Trethewey reclaims her memory, just as she reclaims the voices of the black soldiers whose service has been all but forgotten.

Included in this beautiful new edition of Native Guard is an audio CD of the poems read by the author -- a lovely gift for anyone who loves poetry that speaks to the heart and mind.

From the publisher

Winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, Natasha Trethewey s elegiac Native Guard is a deeply personal volume that brings together two legacies of the Deep South.
The title of the collection refers to the Mississippi Native Guards, a black regiment whose role in the Civil War has been largely overlooked by history. As a child in Gulfport, Mississippi, in the 1960s, Trethewey could gaze across the water to the fort on Ship Island where Confederate captives once were guarded by black soldiers serving the Union cause. The racial legacy of the South touched Trethewey s life on a much more immediate level, too. Many of the poems in Native Guard pay loving tribute to her mother, whose marriage to a white man was illegal in her native Mississippi in the 1960s. Years after her mother s tragic death, Trethewey reclaims her memory, just as she reclaims the voices of the black soldiers whose service has been all but forgotten. Included in this beautiful new edition of Native Guard is an audio CD of the poems read by the author -- a lovely gift for anyone who loves poetry that speaks to the heart and mind."

Details

  • Title Native Guard gift edition
  • Author Natasha Trethewey
  • Binding Trade Cloth
  • Edition First Edition
  • Pages 64
  • Language EN
  • Publisher Houghton Mifflin, Boston
  • Date November 6, 2007
  • ISBN 9780547055480

About the author

NATASHA TRETHEWEY is the current U.S. Poet Laureate and is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Creative Writing at Emory University. "Native Guard," her third collection of poetry, received the 2007 Pulitzer Prize. "Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast" was published in 2010. A new collection of poetry, "Thrall," is forthcoming in September.
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Native Guard, Poems
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Native Guard
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Native Guard
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