Recommendations from our site
“I love Native Guard. Natasha says that poetry is “necessary utterance.” Native Guard is “necessary utterance.” It captures a story of Mississippi that had been effectively silenced: the story of African American soldiers who guarded captured Confederates. This is a story that complicates narratives about the South.” Read more...
“The title refers to one of the first Black units in the Civil War. They’d been stationed at a fort not far from where Trethewey grew up, but their memory had been effaced, as so often happens with Black history…Tretheway is balancing the weight of history with the need to go forward. It’s an exceptional collection about the intersection of personal and public history. And it’s just a wonderful book of poems.” Read more...
Phil Klay, Military Historians & Veteran
