I am a big follower of MPB’s show “Fresh Air,” as I have mentioned before in a previous blog, so I have once again been awarded a gift of hearing a renowned author, and in this case, a Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry (2007), read from her latest work. I am speaking of the Emory University writing faculty’s charm: Natasha Trethewey. Her new release: Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast explores the current condition of the people, the economy, and the overall outlook of her home town of Gulfport and the surrounding communities, ground zero of Katrina, about to celebrate its five year morbid anniversary this coming Sunday, August 29.
Trethewey, the daughter of a white mother and African American father, grew up in a mixed world on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. She left to explore wider horizons, making a name for herself as a woman of literature, ultimately gaining much recognition due to her wide reaching writings, heralding the plight of a woman torn between two worlds, and understanding both. The poignant poems in her Native Guard spoke to the feelings of a biracial woman growing up in the South. In this new release Trethewey speaks much about her brother, who was one particular man harshly affected by Katrina. He had been managing the small houses owned by his and Natasha’s grandmother, but the hurricane wiped them beyond redemption, and the local government sent notice that the young man would be charged a large amount of money for them to be torn down. Losing his livelihood, he succumbed to the temptation of delivering some drugs for money to pay off his debts. He was set up; the police caught him, and he subsequently spent a year in a federal prison- another victim of Katrina.
Trethewey takes her own brother’s experience and others who have suffered psychologically, emotionally, physically, and socially and writes essays, first published in “The Virginia Quarterly Review”, which are now compiled into this new book. She even speaks of her own grandmother, whom she moved to a nursing home in Atlanta, after the storm had rendered her physically inept, and later took her back to bury in Gulfport. Many have said that Trethewey’s new book is a personal look at Katrina and how it greatly affected the lives of so many Mississippians, forever.
Come to Lemuria to hear Natasha Trethewey on Wednesday, September 8, at 5 p.m. It’s not often that Jacksonians, and others in the surrounding area, get to hear a Pulitzer Prize winner read! You can get her to sign her Pulitzer Prize winner: Native Guard as well as her new release: Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. -Nan
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