Natasha Trethewey: ‘I decided I was going to be the one to tell my mother’s story’

“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.” Writing poems, particularly the elegy poems about my mother, did this for me.

Is it still hard to talk about what happened?
Sure. Even this level of conversation I am having with you is very hard. It’s not simply that I am sad. It is much more complex than that. I at once hold these two emotions and one of them is this sense of bereavement that I have lived with my entire adult life. The other is a real sense of happiness because I can talk about her and someone will listen.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/19/natasha-trethewey-i-decided-i-was-going-to-be-the-one-to-tell-my-mothers-story?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other