Behind the Mic: On Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway, Read by the Author

Every Monday through Friday, AudioFile’s editors recommend the best in audiobook listening. We keep our daily episodes short and sweet, with audiobook clips to give you a sample of our featured listens.

Poet Natasha Trethewey’s emotional delivery adds to the impact of this harrowing memoir, Memorial Drive. Host Jo Reed and AudioFile’s Michele Cobb discuss the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s memoir about her childhood in Mississippi, and her mother’s childhood in the segregated South. Grief, shock, love, anger, and guilt are all palpable in Trethewey’s voice as she offers listeners a detailed account of her mother’s abusive relationship, her own understanding of it, and the events that led to her mother’s murder. Though it’s a hard and often viscerally painful listen, it’s a worthwhile one.

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