Memorial Drive
A Daughter's Memoir
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Narrated by:
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Natasha Trethewey
About this listen
An Instant New York Times Best Seller
A New York Times Notable Book
One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2020
Named One of the Best Books of the Year by: Washington Post, NPR, Shelf Awareness, Esquire, Electric Literature, Slate, The Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and InStyle
A chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather, and the moving, intimate story of a poet coming into her own in the wake of a tragedy.
At age 19, Natasha Trethewey had her world turned upside down when her former stepfather shot and killed her mother. Grieving and still new to adulthood, she confronted the twin pulls of life and death in the aftermath of unimaginable trauma and now explores the way this experience lastingly shaped the artist she became.
With penetrating insight and a searing voice that moves from the wrenching to the elegiac, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Natasha Trethewey explores this profound experience of pain, loss, and grief as an entry point into understanding the tragic course of her mother’s life and the way her own life has been shaped by a legacy of fierce love and resilience. Moving through her mother’s history in the deeply segregated South and through her own girlhood as a “child of miscegenation” in Mississippi, Trethewey plumbs her sense of dislocation and displacement in the lead-up to the harrowing crime that took place on Memorial Drive in Atlanta in 1985.
Memorial Drive is a compelling and searching look at a shared human experience of sudden loss and absence but also a piercing glimpse at the enduring ripple effects of white racism and domestic abuse. Animated by unforgettable prose and inflected by a poet’s attention to language, this is a luminous, urgent, and visceral memoir from one of our most important contemporary writers and thinkers.
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- Narrated by: Dina Nayeri
- Length: 10 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Aged eight, Dina Nayeri fled Iran along with her mother and brother and lived in the crumbling shell of an Italian hotel-turned-refugee camp. Eventually, she was granted asylum in America. She settled in Oklahoma, then made her way to Princeton University. In this book, Nayeri weaves together her own vivid story with the stories of other refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, bringing us inside their daily lives and taking us through the different stages of their journeys, from escape to asylum to resettlement.
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Amazing story of resilience and compassion
- By PAH on 09-06-19
By: Dina Nayeri
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My Life as a Rat
- A Novel
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Sadie Alexandru
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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My Life as a Rat follows Violet Rue Kerrigan, a young woman who looks back upon her life in exile from her family following her testimony, at age 12, concerning what she knew to be the racist murder of an African American boy by her older brothers. In a succession of vividly recalled episodes, Violet contemplates the circumstances of her life as the initially beloved youngest child of seven Kerrigan children who inadvertently “informs” on her brothers, setting into motion their arrests and convictions and her own long estrangement.
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Heavy Topics & Satisfying Story
- By Oscar on 06-30-19
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The Song and the Silence
- A Story About Family, Race, and What Was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi Delta While Searching for Booker Wright
- By: Yvette Johnson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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"Have to keep that smile", said Booker Wright in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time Wright was a waiter in a Whites-only restaurant and a local business owner who would become an unwitting icon of the civil rights movement. For he did the unthinkable: Before a national audience, he described what life was truly like for the Black people of Greenwood, Mississippi.
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Exceeded every expectation
- By ZeeJ84 on 05-23-21
By: Yvette Johnson
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The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna
- A Novel
- By: Juliet Grames
- Narrated by: Lisa Flanagan
- Length: 16 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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For Stella Fortuna, death has always been a part of life. Stella’s childhood is full of strange, life-threatening incidents - moments where ordinary situations like cooking eggplant or feeding the pigs inexplicably take lethal turns. Even Stella’s own mother is convinced that her daughter is cursed or haunted. When the Fortunas emigrate to America on the cusp of World War II, Stella and her sister, Tina, must come of age side by side in a hostile new world with strict expectations for each of them.
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Misogyny at its worst
- By brenda on 01-15-20
By: Juliet Grames
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After the Eclipse
- A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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A fierce memoir of a mother's murder, a daughter's coming-of-age in the wake of immense loss, and her ultimate mission to know the woman who gave her life.
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True crime memoir
- By Julie on 11-03-17
By: Sarah Perry
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The Promise
- By: Damon Galgut
- Narrated by: Peter Noble
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Haunted by an unmet promise, the Swart family loses touch after the death of their matriarch. Adrift, the lives of the three siblings move separately through the uncharted waters of South Africa; Anton, the golden boy who bitterly resents his life’s unfulfilled potential; Astrid, whose beauty is her power; and the youngest, Amor, whose life is shaped by a nebulous feeling of guilt.
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Excellent novel
- By ALG on 11-09-21
By: Damon Galgut
What listeners say about Memorial Drive
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Niki Lemeshka
- 04-18-21
Beautiful account of a common loss
America has lost too many women to domestic violence. In Georgia, where much of this book takes place, nearly 1,400 victims have been killed in DV incidents in the last 10 years alone. This beautiful book adeptly tells a story that is likely very similar to what each of those victims experienced, and holds a mirror to not only their surviving family members but to anyone who has lost someone close to them. The author gives us a gift by sharing her experiences, her voice, and her poetic interpretation of life post-loss in a way that crosses beyond cause. This book is lovely in so many ways and I highly recommend it.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Dogs Yoga Singing
- 03-03-21
Beautifully written and narrated by the author
I chose this book based on a recommendation from a friend and because I live very close to the Memorial Drive of the title.
I wasn’t expecting such lyrical prose. The story was heart-breaking, but the writing was beautiful. Highly recommended.
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1 person found this helpful
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- margie marsted
- 08-20-20
Voice too breathy!
The book was beautifully written but I found the narration distracting. Another author who shouldn’t narrate her own book!
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1 person found this helpful
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- Food Head
- 12-04-20
Well written
What an excellent story Natasha needs to write more stories. The way she structured the story was a masterpiece
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- Robin
- 09-17-21
Emotional
A true depiction of domestic violence through the eyes of child. Emotional and sad.
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- Audible Customer
- 06-20-22
Beautiful and Difficult
"Memorial Drive" by Natasha Tretheway is beautiful and sad story of love torn apart by race and destroyed by femicide. We have read this book three times. Each time if feels different. A must read. A keeper.
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- DebHumm
- 08-24-22
Such poetry in the telling
The only review had me wondering, but the truth is this rendering of a sad story is pure poetry. I loved the author’s voice EXCEPT I would have had 2 voices, male and female to relate the court transcription of the unbelievable phone call. Would’ve been easier to follow and that mom was so patient with the totally unhinged stepfather. Life should have dealt her a better hand.
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- Brayson
- 01-23-23
Amazing read
Heartbreaking story! Hearing it from her daughters point of view brought tears to my eyes.
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- Bettie Banks
- 12-15-22
Relentless, breathtaking, chilling
An extraordinary work by an extraordinary woman whose Voice leads the way for those of us who seek.
Bettie Banks
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- SusanKC
- 09-06-20
A Mother and Daughter History
Poignant and truthful, this book relates honest experiences of mother/daughter relationships. Each attempts to protect the other by sharing some life events while remaining silent about others. The memories are the only tangible items that remain.
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2 people found this helpful