Natasha Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi. In 1966 she earned an M.A. in poetry from Hollins University and M.F.A.in poetry from the University of Massachusetts. She has received many awards for her poetry writings,including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. She is currently Professor of English at Emory University where she holds the Phyllis Wheatley Distinguished Chair in Poetry.
Natasha was born in 1966 in Gulfport, Mississippi to Eric Trethewey (also a poet) and Gwendolyn Grimmette. Not only was it a racially mixed marriage (her father was white, her mother black) but they were married when it was still illegal to be in a mixed marriage in Mississippi. Young and in love, the law didn't stop them. They crossed the border to a neighboring state in order to get married.
Her father was originally from Canada and had graduated from Hollins University. Her mother was a social worker and eventually received a Masters degree in that program. It was a doomed relationship from the start for this young couple. They had not been married too very long before the taunts and stares started. One night a cross was burned in front of the house where they lived.
Natasha had her father's coloring and says that though she felt black, she looked white. Her parents divorced when she was 6 years old. She loved them both and always maintained a close relationship with them. A couple of years later, Natasha's Mother remarried. It was a mistake from the beginning. He was abusive to the family, and especially to the Mom. Even though her Mother tried to keep the bad things quiet, Natasha would hear them arguing at night and her mother crying after he was violent.
When Natasha was in high school, her step father killed her mother. Much of Natasha's poetry has been written about that time period. Natasha has written many poems about Mississippi. Most of them are very long and heartfelt. This poem was written about her being in New Orleans, having gone to the city to get a job and help support the family. Although it is quite lengthy, it is also very heartfelt.
Letter Home
By Natesha Trethewey
Four weeks have passed since I left, and still I must write to you of no work. I've worn down the soles and walked through the tightness of my new shoes calling upon the merchants, their offices bustling.
All the while I kept thinking my plain English and good writing would secure for me some modest position. Though I dress each day in my best, hands covered with the lace gloves you crocheted --no one needs a girl.
How flat the word sounds, and heavy. My purse thins. I spend foolishly to make an appearance of quiet industry, to mask the desperation that tightens my throat. I sit watching-- though I pretend not to notice--the dark maids ambling by with their white charges.
Do I deceive anyone? Were they to see my hands, brown as your dear face, they'd know I'm not quite what I pretend to be. I walk these streets a white woman, or so I think, until I catch the eyes of some stranger upon me, and I must lower mine, a negress again.
There are enough things here to remind me who I am. Mules lumbering through the crowded streets send me into reverie, their footfall the sound of a pointer and chalk hitting the blackboard at school, only louder.
Then there are women, clicking their tongues in conversation, carrying their loads on their heads. Their husky voices, the wash pots and irons of the laundresses call to me.
I thought not to do the work I once did, back bending and domestic; my schooling a gift--even those half days at picking time, listening to Miss J--. How I'd come to know words, the recitations I practiced To sound like her, lilting, my sentences curling up Or trailing off at the ends. I read my books until I nearly broke their spines, and in the cotton field, I repeated whole sections I'd learned by heart, Spelling each word in my head to make a picture I could see, as well as a weight I could feel in my mouth. So now, even as I write this and think of you at home, Goodbye
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