Thrall: Poems

Thrall: Poems
Natasha Trethewey
New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012
Sam Fleming Southern Civilization Collection
Vanderbilt University Special Collections

Natasha Tretheway was the United States Poet Laureate of 2012 and 2013. Her 2012 poetry collection Thrall: Poems honestly and unwaveringly addresses the complexities of race and the engrained sense of othering in race relations in America. Tretheway seamlessly shifts between public histories and her personal experience as a biracial woman with an estranged relationship with her white father.

“When he laughs, I know he’s grateful

I’ve made a joke of it, this history

               that links us – white father, black daughter

even as it renders us other to each other.”

-Excerpt from “Enlightenment”