Book Club: "Monument" by Natasha Tretheway

This book club will be hosted at Teaism (Penn quarter location; 400 8th St NW). However if 4 or fewer people RSVP, or in case of inclement weather, it will be moved to virtual (https://meet.google.com/bux-wtkw-qdp?hs=224). Please check up on meetup for updates on location and time before coming.

This time we will be reading the poetry of U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize winner Natasha Tretheway! Please pick a few of your favorite poems and come ready to share your thoughts.

Book Summary:

Layering joy and urgent defiance―against physical and cultural erasure, against white supremacy whether intangible or graven in stone―Trethewey’s work gives pedestal and witness to unsung icons. Monument, Trethewey’s first retrospective, draws together verse that delineates the stories of working class African American women, a mixed-race prostitute, one of the first black Civil War regiments, mestizo and mulatto figures in Casta paintings, and Gulf coast victims of Katrina. Through the collection, inlaid and inextricable, winds the poet’s own family history of trauma and loss, resilience and love.

In this setting, each poem drawn from an “opus of classics both elegant and necessary,” weaves and interlocks with those that come before and those that follow. As a whole, Monument casts new light on the trauma of our national wounds, our shared history. This is a poet’s remarkable labor to source evidence, persistence, and strength from the past in order to change the very foundation of the vocabulary we use to speak about race, gender, and our collective future.

Join our group chat below:
DCNOW group chat. Download "signal app" first then click link below. It sometimes takes time to work.
https://signal.group/#CjQKIDAF2O70qP0GYQ6-rj_nhBb0nAcT41vx8NPky8xZNBcQEhD6zDuYl2Pe1ZO-dVDwASug
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DCNOW is the DC chapter of the national organization for women.