Native Guard: Poems (Signed First Edition)

Natasha Trethewey

ISBN 10: 0618604634 / ISBN 13: 9780618604630

Published by Houghton Mifflin, 2006

About this Item

A truly lovely Signed First Edition copy! Fine in hardcover (square, tight, and unmarked) in a fine condition dust jacket -- crisp, bright, and tight -- which has not been price-clipped. Stated First Edition. (This copy was printed AFTER Trethewey won the Pulitzer Prize, as reflected in the printed sticker adorning the dust jacket.) Elegantly signed by Natasha Trethewey on the title page. Suitable condition for presentation as a gift, or for adding to a library collection. Ships from NC. All hardbacks are sealed in recycled plastic, packaged securely, and shipped promptly with tracking information.

Seller Inventory # 720240444

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Native Guard: Poems (Signed First Edition)
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0618604634
• ISBN 13: 9780618604630
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • American Literature
  • Southern Literature
  • Poetry & Poets

About this title

Synopsis

Growing up in the Deep South, Natasha Trethewey was never told that in her hometown of Gulfport, Mississippi, black soldiers had played a pivotal role in the Civil War. Off the coast, on Ship Island, stood a fort that had once been a Union prison housing Confederate captives. Protecting the fort was the second regiment of the Louisiana Native Guards -- one of the Union's first official black units. Trethewey's new book of poems pays homage to the soldiers who served and whose voices have echoed through her own life.

The title poem imagines the life of a former slave stationed at the fort, who is charged with writing letters home for the illiterate or invalid POWs and his fellow soldiers. Just as he becomes the guard of Ship Island's memory, so Trethewey recalls her own childhood as the daughter of a black woman and a white man. Her parents' marriage was still illegal in 1966 Mississippi. The racial legacy of the Civil War echoes through elegiac poems that honor her own mother and the forgotten history of her native South. Native Guard is haunted by the intersection of national and personal experience.

About the Author

Natasha Trethewey is the author of two previously published collections, Belloq’s Ophelia and Domestic Work. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, she was the recipient of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Grolier Poetry Prize, and a Pushcart Prize. She teaches creative writing at Emory University.