Monument: Poems New and Selected

Longlist, National Book Awards 2018 for Poetry

Monument by Natasha Trethewey book cover
ISBN 9781328507846
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Natasha Trethewey author photo, credit Matt Valentine
Natasha Trethewey

Natasha Trethewey, two-term U.S. Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, and 2017 Heinz Award recipient, has written four collections of poetry and one book of nonfiction. More about this author >

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Layering joy and urgent defiance—against physical and cultural erasure, against white supremacy whether intangible or graven in stone—Trethewey’s work gives pedestal and witness to unsung icons. Monument, Trethewey’s first retrospective, draws together verse that delineates the stories of working class African American women, a mixed-race prostitute, one of the first black Civil War regiments, mestizo and mulatto figures in Casta paintings, Gulf coast victims of Katrina. Through the collection, inlaid and inextricable, winds the poet’s own family history of trauma and loss, resilience and love.

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