Born in 1966 in Gulfport, Mississippi, Natasha Trethewey is an American poet, former United State Poet laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner. The daughter of Eric Trethewey, a White Canadian English professor, and Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, an African American social worker, much of Trethewey’s work is inspired by her biracial identity and experiences growing up in the South. She is the author of six collections of poetry including Domestic Work (2000), Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002), Native Guard (2006), Beyond Katrina: A Mediation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2010), Thrall (2012), Monument: Poems New and Selected (2018), and a memoir, Memorial Drive (2020).[1],[2] Although her writing is rooted in her Southern experiences and upbring, Trethewey’s work has resonated with a global audience.
My artifact is an itinerary from Natasha Trethewey’s 2009 trip to South Korea, which was sponsored by the U.S. embassy. Due to copyright restrictions, photographs could not be taken, but this comprehensive itinerary offers valuable insight into Trethewey’s experiences during this moment of cultural exchange between prominent leaders in creative writing from the United States and South Korea. In 2009 when Trethewey visited South Korea, she was working as a professor of English and creative writing at Emory University and had recently been awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her book Native Guard.1,2
Trethewey spent five days in South Korea, departing for Seoul on Sunday, April 26th and returning to Atlanta on Saturday, May 2nd. Upon her arrival at Incheon International airport the evening of Monday, April 27th, Trethewey was greeted by Cultural Affairs Officer John Dyson from the U.S. Embassy, who accompanied Trethewey to her hotel.The following day, on Tuesday, April 28th, Trethewey visited Chung-ang University, a private university in Seoul which is home to South Korea’s first creative writing department. Established in 1953, Chung-ang University’s creative writing program is renowned as one of the best training programs in South Korea for aspiring writers. At the time of Trethewey’s visit, two hundred and twenty students were enrolled. Trethewey delivered a lecture to students and faculty at Chung-ang University titled, “Poetry and History—Insights into Native Guard”.
The next day, on Wednesday, April 29th, Trethewey visited Yeungnam University, a private university in Gyeongsang, which is approximately a three-hour train ride south of Seoul. At Yeungnam University, Trethewey again presented on Native Guard. After the lecture, Trethewey had lunch with a group of professors at Yeungam University, a reporter, and Ms. Park Jung-nam. Although few English resources are available on Ms. Park Jung-nam and her work, the itinerary notes that she is a well-known local poet.
On Thursday, April 30th, Trethewey returned to Seoul where she visited Sookmyung Women’s University and Kyunghee University to again deliver her lecture, “Poetry and History—Insights into Native Guard”. On her final full day in South Korea, Trethewey visited Yonsei University to again present a lecture on Native Guard. This discussion was moderated by Gabe Hudson, an American writer who served as the Chair of the Creative Writing Program at Yonsei University’s Underwood International College. Interestingly, the lecture which Trethewey delivered at Yonsei University was the only one which was not translated. Finally, on Saturday, May 2nd, Trethewey returned to Atlanta.[3]
Although transcripts of the lecture that Trethewey delivered on Native Guard are unavailable, it is not difficult to imagine why this collection resonated with readers in South Korea. Dedicated to Trethewey’s late mother who was tragically killed by her second husband, Native Guard is divided into three parts. The first section consists of a series of poems centered around memories of Trethewey’s mother and, “deals with the theme of family memory with details from ordinary life, her mother’s death and funeral and the poet’s personal intimate pain.”[4] “Graveyard Blues”[5], “After Your Death”[6], and “Myth”[7] all center around Trethewey’s intense grief and process of coping with the loss of her mother. The second section is written from the perspective of an imagined Black soldier serving in the Native Guard on Ship Island during the Civil War. In the final section, Trethewey, “speaks about her own past and her personal experience as a mixed-blood child in segregationist Mississippi, enlarging her individual experience toward a wider interpretation of African-American history and of Southern history.”4 “Miscegenation”[8] and “My Mother Dreams of Another Country”[9] discuss Trethewey’s parents’ marriage and the circumstances surrounding her birth. Trethewey was born at a time when interracial marriages were prohibited in Mississippi, just one year prior to the U.S. Supreme court’s landmark decision in Loving v. Virginia, which struck down anti-miscegenation.2
Numerous parallels can be observed between literary movements in Korea and Trethewey’s poetry, possibly explaining why the U.S. embassy in South Korea extended an invitation for her to visit. As one reporter observed, “Oppression, loss and the aftereffects of war are familiar to the psyche of both South Korea and the American South, a message that emerged in the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet’s series of lectures in Seoul last week.”[10] This introspective exploration of loss and the lingering aftereffects of war is embodied by the huildam literary movement, which emerged in the early 1990s following South Korea’s transition to democracy. Huildam literature is characterized by, “the disillusionment, frustration, as well as utter sense of failure of the generation that had fought for the long-anticipated revolution.”[11]Both the huildam literary movement and Trethewey grapple with a legacy of the past and use literature to explore history of their respective countries and places of origin. Trethewey is particularly interested in the relationship between public history and individual family history, a concept which she embodies in Native Guard. By interweaving her familial history with the forgotten history of the Native Guard, Trethewey enlarges, “her individual experience toward a wider interpretation of African-American history and of Southern history.”4 Huildam authors share a similar fascination with the past as, “they perform an act of record keeping, the task of a chronicler for a redemptive interruption of the paralyzing course of history.”[12] For instance, “Kim’s Deep River Flows Far Away has received acclaim for both its realistic representation of historical events and periods and for its ‘lyrical romanticism’.”[13] This collection of short stories by Kim Yeong-hyeon was inspired by his personal experiences living under Korea’s military dictatorship.
While in South Korea, Trethewey met with numerous South Korean professors in the literary field, an experience which provided opportunities for reflection and mutual learning which would find expression in Trethewey’s later writing. In an interview following her trip to South Korea, Trethewey shared that, “I learned the meaning of han [the Korean notion of sorrow and regret], and that there’s regret that I carry around at the loss of my mother.”[14] Trethewey explores the concept of han in her poem, “Imperatives for Carrying On in the Aftermath” writing, “you learned from a Korean poet in Seoul: / that one does not bury the mothers body / in the ground but in the chest, or—like you— / you carry her corpse on your back.”[15] Trethewey reflected that, “I spend so much time thinking about what that meant. It troubled me, because it made it seem like, well, here I am dragging, for 35 years, my mother’s corpse along on my back, so visibly that they could just see it on me. And what does that mean?”[16] Although brief, this exchange prompted Trethewey to reflect upon the significance of the emotional weight which she carried with her following her mother’s passing. These emotions which Trethewey explores in her poetry—grief, regret, and a desire to honor and remember the past—are universal, allowing her writing to resonate with readers from around the world, from Georgia to Gyeongsang.
[1] Poetry Foundation, “Natasha Trethewey.”
[2] Newsmakers, “Natasha Trethewey.”
[3] American Embassy, Seoul, visit to Korea, welcome kit, Natasha Trethewey papers.
[4] De Cenzo, “Natasha Trethewey: The Native Guard of Southern History”, 21.
[5] Trethewey, Native Guard, 8.
[6] Trethewey, Native Guard,13.
[7] Trethewey, Native Guard,14.
[8] Trethewey, Native Guard,36.
[9] Trethewey, Native Guard,37.
[10] Bae, “Pulitzer poet stirs Korean sorrow.”
[11] Lee, Memory Construction and the Politics of Time in Neoliberal South Korea, 55.
[12] Lee, Memory Construction and the Politics of Time in Neoliberal South Korea, 48.
[13] Lee, Memory Construction and the Politics of Time in Neoliberal South Korea, 58.
[14] Trethewey, interview.
[15] Trethewey, Monument: Poems New and Selected, 1.
[16] Trethewey, interview.
Bibliography
Bae, Hannah. “Pulitzer poet stirs Korean sorrow.” Korea JoongAng Daily, May 4, 2009. https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=2904376.
De Cenzo, Giorgia. “Natasha Trethewey: The Native Guard of Southern History.” South Atlantic Review 73, no. 1 (Winter 2008): 20—49. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27784759.
Trethewey, Natasha. Native Guard. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006.
Lee, Namhee. Memory Construction and the Politics of Time in Neoliberal South Korea. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022.
Poetry Foundation. “Natasha Trethewey.” Accessed October 25, 2023. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/natasha-trethewey.
Trethewey, Natasha. American Embassy, Seoul, visit to Korea, welcome kit, April 2009. Box 6, Folder 2. Natasha Trethewey papers. Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University. 17 October 2023.
“Natasha Tretheway.” In Newsmakers. Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Gale In Context: Biography. https://link-gale-com.proxy.library.emory.edu/apps/doc/K1618004746/BIC?u=emory&sid=bookmark-BIC&xid=4221368e.
Trethewey, Natasha. Monument: Poems New and Selected. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2018.
Trethewey, Natasha. “Narrative of My Heart: A Conversation with Natasha Trethewey.” Interview by Yvonne Conza. Los Angeles Review of Books, July 28, 2020. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/narrative-of-my-heart-a-conversation-with-natasha-trethewey/.