History Lesson by Natasha Trethewey (2000)

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Natasha Trethewey’s History Lesson tells about an important relationship, memory, history, culture, as well as race. [1]

Poetry

I am four in this photograph, standing

on a wide strip of Mississippi beach,

my hands on the flowered hips

of a bright bikini. My toes dig in,

curl around wet sand. The sun cuts

the rippling Gulf in flashes with each

tidal rush. Minnows dart at my feet

glinting like switchblades. I am alone

except for my grandmother, other side

of the camera, telling me how to pose.

It is 1970, two years after they opened

the rest of this beach to us,

forty years since the photograph

where she stood on a narrow plot

of sand marked colored, smiling,

her hands on the flowered hips

of a cotton meal-sack dress. [2]

Author

Natasha Trethewey is a daughter of a mixed-race marriage to a poet, professor, and Canadian emigrant Eric Tretheywe and Gwendolyn Ann Turnbough, a social worker. Trethewey was born in Gulfport, Mississippi, winning the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in poetry for her third book of poems, Native Guard (2006). [3]

Racism Issue

The author took back in spontan ways in two jumps as the poet’s grandmother is taking the picture in 1970—just “two years after they opened / the rest of this beach to us,” a reminder of the cruelties of Jim Crow South; no one can deny the pleasure of the beach, its sun and minnows.

The end of the poem completes the structure as the author set up: forty years has been passed since her grandmother.

stood on a narrow plot

of sand marked colored, smiling,

her hands on the flowered hips

of a cotton meal-sack dress.

The “meal-sack dress” the visual counterpoint to the bikini the author's wore, which may be seemed as a symbol of progress out of poverty, with the only beach behind it, not dreadful sign, end of the segregation on the beach and progress—from “narrow plot” to “wide strip”—seems a fragile, fragile thing. [4]

The beach mentioned in the poem is a beach that used to be segregated. The young author was innocent at that time, not knowing the importance of her position. Contrary to the grandmother who photographed the author, precisely knew what it meant for this small black standing on that beach. As the time goes by, from a society where racial segregation was normal to one where it was slowly vanished. [5]

References

  1. History Leson. June 9, 2012. Retrieved January 16, 2021
  2. Poetry and the Civil Rights Movement. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved January 16, 2021
  3. History Lesson. Poetry out Loud. Retrieved January 16, 2021
  4. O, Carolyn. “a narrow plot of sand”: Natasha Trethewey’s “History Lesson” from Domestic Work. Rosemary and Reading Glasses. March 24, 2015. Retrieved January 16, 2021
  5. What is the meaning of the poem called " History Lesson"?. XFCRS. October 9, 2018. Retrieved January 16, 2021