Difference between revisions of "Miscegenation by Natasha Trethewey (2007)"

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[[Category: Black Racism in Poetry]]
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[[Category: Black-Targeted Racism in Poetry]]

Latest revision as of 07:39, 15 March 2021

Miscegenation is based on Trethewey’s parents’ story where they crossed state lines to wed because at that time, Mississippi forbade the interracial marriage. This poem is written in the ghazal form, with birth and belonging, as well as names and death coming together. [1]

Poetry

In 1965 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi;

they went to Ohio to marry, returned to Mississippi.

They crossed the river into Cincinnati, a city whose name

begins with a sound like sin, the sound of wrong—mis in Mississippi.


A year later they moved to Canada, followed a route the same

as slaves, the train slicing the white glaze of winter, leaving Mississippi.


Faulkner’s Joe Christmas was born in winter, like Jesus, given his name

for the day he was left at the orphanage, his race unknown in Mississippi.

My father was reading War and Peace when he gave me my name.

I was born near Easter, 1966, in Mississippi.

When I turned 33 my father said, It’s your Jesus year—you’re the same

age he was when he died. It was spring, the hills green in Mississippi.

I know more than Joe Christmas did. Natasha is a Russian name—

though I’m not; it means Christmas child, even in Mississippi. [2]

Author

Natasha Trethewey is a former Poet Laureate of Mississippi who won for her 2006 collection Native Guard at the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2007. She was also appointed in 2012 and 2013 as a [United States Poet Laureate]. In 2019, Trethewey was both elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. [3]

She was born in Gulfport, Mississippi on April 26, 1966. [4] Trethewey’s subject themes around history; both family and that of the American South, memory, and race. [5]

Her works of poetry including, Domestic Work (2000); Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002); Native Guard (2006), for which she was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize; Thrall (2012); and, most recently, Monument: Poems New and Selected (2018). She is also author of Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir (2020) and Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2010). [6]

Racism Issue

Natasha Trethewey’s Miscegenation is an autobiographical poem which tells about the difficulty that mixed-race people face in accepting their identity where they are the ones being discriminated against in society. The poem shows how racial discrimination can affect one’s identity when they do not belong to either black or white. Trethewey through this poem describes her parents became victims of society where their relationship was not accepted. “In 1965 my parents broke two laws of Mississippi” two laws mentioned in the line refer to mixed-racial marriage and having the author as their kid. [7]

This poem told how the author’s parents had to cross another state in order to get married because of their racial differences. In 1967, the mixed marriage were illegal in sixteen states, including Mississippi and the children who born from the interracial marriage would be considered as ilegitimate. As in the poem, the author comments on the fact of the society against her parent’s marriage by making a pun with the name of the state she was born in.

They crossed the river into Cincinnati, a city whose namebegins with a sound like sin, the sound of wrong—mis in Mississippi.A year later they moved to Canada, followed a route the sameas slaves, the train slicing the white glaze of winter, leaving Mississippi

The pun used form the two cities are to demonstrate that what the author’s parents did was wrong in the society’s point of view. “Sin” implies a mistake in which being married and having the author as a child is a mistake in both society and law. [8]

References

  1. Poetry Unbound Natasha Trethewey Miscegenation. On Being. Retreived January 16, 2021
  2. Poetry and the Civil Rights Movement. Poetry Foundation. Retrieved January 16, 2021
  3. Natasha Trethewey. Wikipedia. Retrieved January 16, 2021
  4. Trethewey. Poets. Retrieved January 16, 2021
  5. Kuiper, Kathleen. Natasha Trethewey American poet and teacher. Britannica. Retrieved January 16, 2021
  6. BIOGRAPHIES Natasha Trethewey. Loc. Retrieved January 16, 2021
  7. Analysis Of Miscegenation By Natasha Trethewey. IPL. Retrived January 16, 2021
  8. Politidou, Sofia. White Yet Non-White: Miscegenation in Natasha Trethewey’s Native Guard (2007). American Studies RC Wordpress. Marcyh 8, 2013. Retrived January 16, 2021