A piercingly beautiful memoir about race, loss and family by the Pulitzer Prize winner and twice-appointed US poet laureate: the story of black women and violence in the American South as you've never read it before
'A meditation on race, and class, and grief . . . Uplifting, but just wrenching' BARACK OBAMAONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2020AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARWINNER OF THE ANISFIELD-WOLF BOOK AWARDSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2021 CARNEGIE MEDAL IN NON-FICTION'This will be read for many, many years to come as a classic not just of the memoir genre but of contemporary writing' Simon Schama'Astonishing' Thandiwe Newton'As gripping as any thriller' Mail on Sunday'A masterpiece' Elizabeth Gilbert'Powerful' The TimesAt age nineteen, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Heartbreakingly clear-eyed and tender, Memorial Drive is a daughter's act of love - and an unflinching excavation of the wounds that never heal. For as Trethewey tells her story, and reclaims her mother's, she lays bare the indelible scars of slavery and racism on the soul of a troubled nation.'Sheer artistry . . . Trethewey's masterpiece suggests that the greatest act of defiance a black person can do is to remember' Financial Times
